Lost
by DMartinez
Summary: John's lost both of his sons. One to college and the other just up and left. John searches for his boys accompanied by a mysterious woman who just won't let him go.
1. Chapter 1

Author: DMartinez  
Email: shockerdm  
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Kripke and the WB, CW. No infringement intended.  
Rating: R  
Category: Supernatural; Dean, John  
Summary: John's lost both of his sons. One to college and the other just up and left. John searches for his boys accompanied by a mysterious woman who just won't let him go.

Lost

Chapter 1

Fuckin' woods. John hated the fuckin' woods. Birds were chirping and crickets singing and frogs… doing what frogs do; Croaking, ribbiting… whatever. Not a God damned evil thing in the whole fuckin' woods. Two days in the fuckin' woods and not a damned trace of the thing that had been screwing with the locals. Breath puffing out in front of him, he fumbled his phone out of his pocket. Another night in this cold and John would have himself a good case of pneumonia. Mid-range signal and no missed calls. No voicemails. No answer from Dean in nearly a day. This was the kid's damn hunt and where the fuck was the kid?

How in the hell did a thing just up and disappear? The research had been for shit and the reports from the locals were contradicting and useless. If he didn't know better, he'd call it a jackalope. It was looking more and more like pixies but no one could remember seeing a pixie and all lore was pretty vague. He didn't even know if pixies could cause harm to anyone beyond creating a little confusion. Lore had crossed with fairies and goblins and no one knew what was what anymore. Travelers got lost and followed lights into the forest. Or was that the Will o' the Wisp? _Fuck._ This was _Dean's_ hunt and John didn't know how many times he had told that kid that the research had to be _solid_ before going after anything. This was not solid. It wasn't even a hunt. If John had done this to Dean, he would have called it a _snipe_ hunt. Circles and circles and not a God damned thing in these fuckin' woods.

Shoving the cell phone back into his jacket, he watched the tree line for sunset. Leaves and sticks crunched underfoot for another mile before the woods went absolutely quiet. No birds. No crickets and no frogs. Dead silence. When he looked up, the sun was set. Then he heard the screams. Female. Terrified. Bursting into a sprint, John dodged low hanging branches and leapt over dead logs. How long had he been running? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? The screams had quieted to an echoing sob. Raising his rifle, John slowed his pace. He was close. He knew it. Sounds rebounded off the woods but he had learned how to read that in Vietnam. He was fuckin' close. What it was, he didn't know. Turning into a grove of lush greenery, he saw it. Six and a half feet tall, skin slightly green, slightly damp. It turned to face him, eyes turning up at the corners in a parody of the human eyes. Its very human mouth split open to reveal a mouthful of jagged teeth. Leveling the gun at its chest, John hesitated only a moment before it leapt and he had to swing the barrel upward, squeezing the trigger and letting loose consecrated iron rounds into the overgrown pixie's chest. It fell and screamed in agony, clawing at its chest, legs flailing. Shock of white hair on its head picked up leaves and moss as it whipped around.

It took only a moment more to fire another shot, point blank, at its head. Pulling the machete off his back, he lopped its head off just to be sure. Working quickly, he dug a shallow pit to toss the pieces, kindling and gasoline for a hungry bonfire. It wasn't until the flames danced in the air that he remembered the screams that had guided him to this latest victory. What he found was the shivering shadow where a woman had once been. Naked, bruised and bloody… John approached carefully. Blonde hair covered her face where she cowered against three closely growing trees. "Miss?"

Shaking hands lowered to cover her chest before red-rimmed eyes emerged from the slight tilt of her head. She skittered backward when he stepped toward her. Obviously traumatized and violated in more ways than one, John didn't try to get any closer. When he scanned the area, there was no sign of her clothes. He shrugged out of his jacket and pulled off his flannel and his T-shirt. He tossed them at her feet before turning to keep an eye on his pyre. After a moment, he could hear movement behind him. He cleared his throat. "I'll take you to the hospital."

She didn't speak. When he turned, she stood very still, T-shirt engulfing her and the flannel tied around her waist to cover her thighs. She watched him bury the remains and she limped after him back to the truck. It was pitch dark by that point and by the time they lost the light of the fire, she was clenching her fingernails into his jacket back to make sure she didn't lose him in the darkness. The hike was long and he wasn't sure he wasn't lost himself but he kept them moving. He worried about her feet but she didn't speak up and it wasn't like he had anything to cover them. Maybe he had some extra socks in his pack but they were likely filthy and wouldn't do much better than barefoot in this wood. Dawn was peeking over the mountains when he opened the truck door for her. He didn't touch her but she climbed in on her very slow own. Green eyes drifted closed as he navigated the dirt trails back to the paved roads and those back to the nearest town where he'd last seen his oldest son; where their room still stood rented but empty.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The ambulance bay was quiet and empty. Slow night for the little town tucked up in Appalachia. The sky was still pink and it was probably near the end of the shift for the folks inside but John needed to get this girl looked at and taken care of so he could get back to looking for Dean. John had to coax her gently from the cab and to her feet. He helped her limp through the doors. She clenched onto his hands as they took step by step into the hospital. A sleep-eyed male nurse leapt to his feet. "Sir, you can't park out there."

"Got a bit of an emergency." John gestured to the girl under his arm. "She's been attacked in the woods."

When the nurse rounded the desk to take a look at her, the girl started screaming. The nurse ran back to the desk to page more names than John could keep up with. John couldn't tear his eyes away from the sheer panic on the girl's face whenever the male nurse tried to guide her to a room. Finally, John had enough. "The girl's been raped! Can't you wait for a female to come deal with her?"

"You know for certain that she's been raped?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty damn sure."

In the end the girl stopped screaming but no one could touch her, not even the female nurses who had come to assist. John had gone back to his truck. He should just leave. He had no ties to the girl and he had saved her life. He was done. The cops were on their way. Hell, he couldn't leave. The cops would need to talk to him or else he was a suspect and then his face would be plastered all over the damned state, which would get the feds on the scent and then all over the country. He'd need to lie, of course. No one would believe the Pixie story. Hysterical females were technically in the job description of a hunter. So he pulled the truck over into the parking lot and checked his phone for the millionth time. No messages. No missed calls. He hit the speed dial. "Dean. It's Dad. You fuckin' call me as soon as you get this message. I'm not screwing around with you anymore. I got the damned thing and we got heat that I can't shake."

When he walked back into the hospital, the girl was screaming her head off once more. It was the kind of scream that came from terror, just the way she had screamed in the woods. John raced down the hall to her room and the nurses were trying to placate the girl, but she wasn't having any of it. John's borrowed clothes were stuck to her body with her own blood and she couldn't calm down enough to let them clean her up. The way she was swinging that IV pole at the nurses meant that any minute a crew of orderlies would be in to physically hold her down while they drugged her. That was no-win situation for anyone.

"What in the hell is going on in here?" John's voice boomed in their ears but she stopped screaming. John stepped around the startled nurses and looked the girl over. Holding his hands out, he approached her. "Darlin', I know you're hurt and scared but these people need to look you over. I don't know where all the blood came from but something could get infected and then you're going to be in a whole other world of hurt."

She wiped the tears from her big green eyes but didn't say a word as she set the pole down. John didn't even realize that he'd been walking toward her until he'd laid his hand on her shoulder. She flinched but didn't jerk away or scream. Gently, he guided her to sit on the bed. The nurses cautiously moved and when John tried to let them have their room, she gripped his hand and didn't let him go. The floor nurse fixed him with a silent stare. John nodded and took up post next to the bed. He whispered reassurances to the girl who nodded, mutely and let the nurses do their work. He kept his back to the nurses and her lower half, kept his gaze on hers, returned the squeezes so that she could fight back the facial expressions she struggled against. She opened her mouth a few times and it looked like she was trying to tell him something but nothing came out. She screwed up her face after a while and just focused on breathing as they worked on her torn body.

She was calm when they slipped her the sedative so John could leave the room to talk to the cops. John kept his eye on the room while the cop asked his three questions seven different ways. John never changed his story. "I was hiking in the woods. Had been for two days… just something I do sometimes. Get away from it all. I heard the screaming and I had to check it out…" John took a deep breath as much for effect as for him to deal with what he had actually seen. A fuckin' six and a half foot tall _pixie_ with razor sharp teeth_._ "She was alone, had stopped screaming already. She was naked and shivering, bloody. I gave her my clothes and helped her to my truck. She hasn't said a word in this whole time."

"If she hasn't said a word, how did you know that she'd been raped?"

"Officer Trip." John took a breath. "It was _obvious_."

Officer Trip's expression softened. "Not a word, huh?"

"No." John remembered the scene he'd burst in on. "Didn't have her clothes, nothing. He must have dragged her out there or…" He had to embellish just right. "Taken off with her things. Hell, don't even know her name at this point."

"Hell." Trip breathes out. "You… Thank you for bringing her in. I gotta tell you though."

"Don't leave town too quickly?" John finished for him. Small town cops were all the same. They came in two categories; Boy Scouts turned cowboys or Bastards turned Dickheads. This one was a Boy Scout.

"That about sums it up."

John didn't wander far from the room. He didn't have to stay. He didn't know this girl. He had to find Dean. But he stayed. Hysterics were bad for everyone. She was only calm when he was in the room. She was only compliant when he held her hand. The nurses all gave him looks. Different looks from most of them. Nurse Adams glared at him; she seemed to think he had something more to do with the trauma. Night shift nurses thought he was sweet. Nurse Abraham felt he was wasting his time but respected the choice given the alternative; alternative being a screaming young woman if anyone entered the room.

She kept trying to talk to him but nothing came out. The doctors started doing tests. They were hard to do when she was hysterical but the hysterics scaled down and John was able to leave the room for some of the tests. He kept calling Dean but didn't get a response. He snuck around to the morgue. He hung around the police station under the guise of asking for progress on the girl's case. No one was looking for Dean, except him. No one had seen him. No one had seen the car.

The all-points went out on the girl. No one in the surrounding towns seemed to know who this girl was. Given paper and pen all she could write was "I don't know. I can't remember."

The doctors patched up the physical wounds. They couldn't do a whole lot with the psychological ones except to suggest therapy but the talking… They had decided her inability to speak was post traumatic stress disorder, which, they said, also caused the amnesia. They talked and talked at her. The words they didn't say was that the concern of a psychological break was high. She lowered her head and took a deep breath. She didn't speak. She held on tight to John's hand but didn't say a word.

When the doctors left, she lifted her eyes to John and even though she didn't speak, her eyes were pretty damn clear. She had _seen_ what that thing was and it scared the crap out of her. The Evil she had witnessed, experienced, had stolen her words and she might never get them back. The path they had drawn was clear to John. He'd had friends go down that path. He hadn't seen them again. Bughouse was no one's dream vacation.

John had his duffle on his shoulder when he walked into the hospital. He chatted with the nurse on duty. "I'm headed out."

"You stayed longer than you should have." Nurse Trina sighed wearily. "Most wouldn't have bothered. It's a kindness you did."

"I'm gonna say bye."

"Hope she takes it well… but they got her on all kinds of meds for the hysteria… Who knows if she's hearing anything." Trina waved him on in.

John shut the door behind him. He stared at her. She stared back. He pulled some clothes from his bag and drew a rough map on a napkin. "I don't know what you want. I'll be round back for the next half hour or so."

Her eyes filled with tears as she stared out the window. She shook as she took a bottle from her bedside table and stared at it. He filled her water glass and she took it with a wan smile. When her hands shook too much to do the job, he took the bottle from her hand. He opened it easily and shook out a pill. He snapped it in half and she took it with the water.

"It's up to you. You can stay and follow whatever they have in mind for you or I can sneak you out the back. I got things I got to do. I put them off long enough."

She nodded and wiped her eyes with the corner of the sheet. John lingered a moment. "If you stay. This is goodbye and I hope that someday you'll sleep through the night again."

John passed Nurse Trina and waved on his way out. He had food in the truck. A diner he'd been to too many times to count. The shift change watched him go. He pulled the truck around the back of the hospital. No one gave him another glance, nor the girl who slipped out of the back door and climbed into cab with him. It wasn't until they were 20 miles out that he realized he had no clue what he was going to do with her. He could leave her with Pastor Jim or Caleb or maybe with Bobby but as little as any would appreciate it, he doubted that she would stay put without a fight.

An hour later, John turned down the radio. It was Dean's favorite song anyway and that kid was really going to get it when John got his hands on him again. "I hope you understand what I did." She stared, big green eyes. "They were going to send you to a psych hospital upstate and they wouldn't know how to deal with what you been though and I think you know that." She didn't answer, of course, just stared right at him with the most serene expression he'd seen on her face in the last week. Probably because he knew what she'd seen and he had never tried to tell her that she hadn't seen it. That the monster didn't exist "You need a name, darlin'." She smiled and tilted her head back against the window. "Well, then, Amnesia Girl, what will it be? Probably not Jane Doe."

She wrinkled her nose at him and tucked her hands under her arms. He heard the crinkle but didn't mention it. There were probably bandages everywhere. He winked at her. "Darlene, then."

She snorted and rolled her eyes but she didn't say no, nor shake her head.

"Okay, Darling Darlene, we're going to a friend of mine to hole up for a bit. I gotta find my boy and I just hope he's okay." His eyes were focused on the road, he nearly jumped when he felt her hand on his arm. Comforting _him_. That hadn't happened in a long fuckin' time. Her big green eyes just a bit wet and her lips curled into a sympathetic smile. "So, still not talking."

She opened her mouth and nothing came out. She shrugged and turned her head to the road. She sighed and propped her socked feet on the dashboard. John watched her out of the corner of his eye for a long time. He couldn't imagine being unable to remember something as basic as his name. Couldn't imagine not being able to talk. She had to deal with both while trying to make sense of the attack. To use Dean's words; it sucked big time.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The regular road routines didn't comfort John. Classic radio, five point checks, reciting gun maintenance and mentally inventorying his locker. He dialed Dean's phone repeatedly and left messages that got more and more irate. The girl slept through it all. Dean was a grown man but he had never disobeyed an order. He had never not checked in within reason. Something had happened to the kid and John was going out of his mind. John pulled up to Bobby's and left her asleep in the truck. Bobby's dogs greeted him with a growl and a bark, which brought Bobby around with his shotgun. John held his hands up. It was a little too soon to come strolling up the salvage yard after the way he'd exited it last. "Hey Bobby. How's it going?"

"What in the hell are you doing here, Winchester?" Bobby didn't lower his weapon.

"Just looking for my boy." John waved his bare hands a bit. He was unarmed and he wasn't here for trouble. Then again, Bobby had always said that John had a way of attracting trouble.

Bobby's eyes narrowed. "You know where he went."

"Not him, Bobby." John wet his lips and got ready to say it for the first time aloud. He was not able to keep the tremor out of his voice when the words came out. "Dean's gone."

Bobby lowered his gun. Concern for Dean etched all over and if John was honest with himself, it was one of a few reasons he'd picked that last fight with Bobby before Bobby ran him off. Sam and Dean looked up to Bobby and John… didn't like to admit he had competition or that it was likely that Bobby was a better human being than John was and the boys knew it. "Dean run off?"

"I don't know. I ain't heard hide nor hair of that one in almost 2 weeks. Not a call. Not a note. Nothing. Not a fuckin' carrier pigeon." John was usually good at keeping his emotions in check but he was scared for the boy. Dean was a grown man but John never let the boys hunt alone. They worked better as a team. Dean had been John's partner in hunting since he was 16. Dean had had his rebellion around 14 but had settled by 15 and had jumped in head first when John really leaned on him. It was not like Dean to not check in.

"Dean did that?" Bobby leaned on the rail on his porch, absently patting a dog's head with his free hand.

Bobby would know Dean just as well as John did. John felt that green-eyed monster rearing its head again. "Looks like."

"Well then, if Dean run off and Sam's at college, who's that you got in your truck?"

John glanced back at his truck. Could only just see her hair where it smashed against the window in her sleep. "Some girl I got on a hunt. Saved her from a Pixie."

"Pixie." The eyebrows weren't visible from beneath the cap but John was sure they'd just leapt up inside it. "A pixie?"

"Tall green dude; likes to rape and terrorize and steal voices." John motioned the height with his hand and shrugged off the other stuff. Bobby knew how John felt about monsters that terrorized women. They had never discussed it outright but John was ready to kill anything that targeted women just on principle… just in case it was the thing that stole his wife.

"Steal voices?" Now Bobby was just laughing.

"She was screaming when I found her. She ain't said a word since."

"Not a sound?" Bobby walked down his porch, left his gun behind.

"Well, she screams if somebody touches her but not a word. No words." John shrugged. It was fuckin' weird and he could tell it freaked her out. "She tries, nothing comes out."

"Maybe it's just trauma. PTSD. I ain't never seen a pixie but I'm willing to bet if it was the first creature I ever saw, it would've throwed me a good one." The older man pondered aloud.

"I don't know." John shrugged again and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Bobby used the tips of his fingers to tip his hat back a bit. "So why you got her?"

"She doesn't scream when she's with me and they were gonna ship her to the bughouse… but she ain't crazy.I saw what she saw." John still had trouble wrapping his mind around that. The creature had been six and a half feet tall. John was a tall man, His boys were tall. It was unusual to meet a man he had to look up at. Creatures were usually less humanlike when they got that big.

"You still haven't said how you ended up with her in your truck."

"Should I kick her out?" John's ire started to grow and everyone knew that John could go from irate to bat-shit-crazy in 10 seconds flat. "Send her out into the world without a voice and without a memory?"

"Yeah, I understand all that. My question is why is she with _you_?" Bobby held his hands up. "You're not exactly known for your bedside manner, John."

"Honestly?" John cleared his throat. "I think she's the only thing keeping me from going nuts wondering where Dean is."

John made himself at home the way he always did. Bobby introduced himself to Darlene and the girl had shrugged until she found something to write with. Bobby tucked her up in a room that he hadn't used in ages. Darlene moved cautiously around the house at first. Her hair hung lank and dirty down her back. Long limbs curled in tight as she tiptoed from room to room. The dogs let her wander a bit around the salvage yard. She wasn't skittish around the mutts, at least. They seemed to know she needed protecting. John watched them herd her away from the garage and from the more dubious of car piles. Bobby's gruff ways didn't seem to bother her. He had a way about him, the more he growled, the more he cared. John's story had made Bobby care at least a little. It was a miracle that she liked John. Bobby was right, John was _not_ known for his bedside manner but he was the only familiar face she knew. Sudden noises made her jump and look to John for protection. John just hoped that Dean would go to Bobby's or Jim's if he could. If he could. Wherever that kid was… John sighed and opened his journal. He had to enter his notes on the Pixie hunt. He hadn't done it in Kentucky because he'd been focused on Dean and Darlene.

The first note appeared in tight neat caps on a scrap of newspaper that floated onto his journal. **"Why do you know about pixies?"**

John took a breath and leaned back in his chair. He wouldn't start lying to her now. Her best bet for survival was to know exactly what she had walked into. He met her eyes and let out the breath. "It's what I do."

Her eyebrows shot up. She underlined the word **"pixies."**

"Yeah, amongst other things." He nodded when she stood up straight. There was something familiar about the way she stood. Maybe like she was at-attention. "There are other things that I get rid of so that girls like you can be safe."

**"Why?"** She scribbled the word.

"Something bad happened to my family." John really didn't feel like talking about it any further than that. With Sam gone and Dean missing, he just wanted to keep moving. He needed to do something useful. "Get some sleep."

The girl didn't really sleep in the musty bed that Bobby had given her. She tended to nap during the day when and where she knew John had his eyes on her. She wore John's long underwear and his flannels until Bobby had excused himself to the attic and returned with a suitcase full of old clothes. Bobby really had a soft spot for lost souls. John had only heard Bobby speak of his wife once. That had been years ago after a drinking binge following a hunt where they were not lucky enough to save the girl. John had no idea the woman's clothes were still in the house. It was oddly sentimental of Bobby. Darlene had happily washed them and drowned in the fabric but a dress was a dress. She stole one of John's belts and a sweater from Bobby's closet. John had uncomfortably asked about underwear, she'd just grinned and wandered away with her fingernail between her teeth, a light blush on her face.

Darlene had stared at Bobby's stove for a long moment but just shook her head and left it to the men. She didn't eat much but picked at food while she stared out the window or pet one of the dogs. She padded around the house barefoot, shoved socks into an old pair of boots to go outside. She didn't go far. The woods behind the salvage yard made her nervous. Still, she got restless and the nightmares crept in despite her best efforts not to sleep. She'd given John a black eye and a split lip when he had tried to wake her during a particularly bad one. At least she had some fighting instincts. That made him give her some credit. She hadn't been completely helpless when that damned thing had gotten her but it had still overpowered her.

Then Bobby picked up a book on sign language on one of his forays into town for food and alcohol. She had grinned until she realized that other people would have to learn it or else she'd just be waving her hands around. She carried the book around anyway. John had just shook his head and turned back to his own studies. Bobby had picked up some interesting books since the last time John had sat still long enough to go over the inventory.

While he was sketching a picture of the Pixie for his notes, she stood over him. She touched his shoulder. When he looked up, she turned away and lifted her dress over her bare hip. There were wounds that were still healing. John didn't know how she could sit. The Pixie had done several things to her before raping her. Some of those things had left scars on her flesh.

John swallowed down a lump as he examined the scabs on her thighs near her hips, stretching back across her ass. Some marks had been made by _claws_ in the heat of the moment, he noticed when he fitted his hands over the pattern of lines, but some had been put there intentionally, purposefully. She held still while John sketched them. Her face was red but she motioned him to keep going, lifting the other side of her dress and leaning on the table to steady herself. John tried to keep his eyes on the scabs themselves and not the body part they were etched into. When he was done, he set aside the paper. She shoved off the table and grabbed his arm. She put the pen back in his hand and fumbled for the buttons on the loose dress. Scabs on her stomach as well.

Darlene glanced over her shoulder as she spread the fabric. They started at her pubic bone. John shouted at Bobby to go get some beer. The call back had been rude but the truck left after a minute or two. John met her eyes. She nodded and he pulled the fabric wider to see the pattern etched in her skin and scabbed over. She winced when he had to comb through her pubic hair to make sure he had gotten all the fine lines. Some scabs were already lifting, leaving pink lines behind. He followed the design up her belly, circling the belly button and spreading across her ribs and converging up to her breast bone, ending abruptly between her breasts. John sketched them as best as he could. When he was done, he roughly sketched the outline of her body around the designs while she buttoned her dress up. Then he watched as she hesitated over her breasts. She grasped his hands then turned around, shifting the fabric backward until her shoulder blades were bared. The scabs were already lifting. He couldn't make out a pattern but he didn't want to rip up the scabs too soon. He traced them as well as he could. She held still so he could do so. As he followed the lines of the scabs, the pattern became clear. It was intricate, complex. Like insect wings. Each one was the length of his thumb.

When the door slammed, announcing Bobby's return, she pulled her dress forward and buttoned the front. Her face had faded from the deep red it had been when he'd worked on her belly. He watched her put one of his belts around her middle to fit the dress to her curves; Bobby's late wife had been a _healthy_ woman. She scribbled something on his piece of paper. **"Will it help?"**

John sighed and looked up at her. "Maybe. I keep notes to make sure if it ever happens again, we know what worked the last time. This will help identify… victims."

She nodded and padded off to get a beer. John let out a breath he didn't know he'd held that whole time. The woman had a body on her. John had been too long without female company. He tucked the drawing away and joined them in the kitchen. He watched her grinning around her beer. Bobby had returned with a pair of lady's boots. He opened his own beer and watched her slip her feet into the new-to-her boots. John looked to Bobby. "You holding out on me? Got any other talents of use?"

"Her feet are about the size of my wife's. You know how many shoe stores I had to follow her through? Chanting that magic number?" Bobby shrugged. "You know yours did that to you, too."

John shrugged. Maybe Mary had. Size 6. Narrow. Well, until Sammy was due. She was adamant that no one know how huge her feet had gotten. He brushed passed the both of them to drink his beer outside. Mary had a hold on him that he was never going to shake. No matter how he tried. He would never find another woman like her. He would never replace her, never forget her. Her memory kept him on the path. The boys were raised and gone. John had nothing to cling do but the foggy remnants in his mind of her long blonde hair, her mischievous green eyes and way she'd touch him. She'd owned every inch of him. Gave him children that he'd run off. He pulled on his beer and tried to ignore the young blonde who sat beside him to drink hers. Well, at least she didn't want to talk. He definitely wasn't up to that.

Darlene put on a little show for them with what she'd learn to sign. Translating was difficult until she'd figured out how the signs had come about. Man, she signed. Then pointed to Bobby's hat. Woman, she signed and put a ribbon around her head to tie under her chin. She moved her mouth as she signed. John was better at reading lips than trying to learn a new language. He had enough of them stuck in his head. It had killed an evening and watching Bobby try to learn what she'd learned was entertaining for a while. His eyes just kept wandering to the edge of her dress because he knew there was nothing underneath it. John ran his hand over his face and drank another beer. John did fish the topical ointment out of the first aid kit and tossed it at her when she headed for stairs for the night. She looked at it and then at him. She fisted her hand around the tube and pressed the end against her palm and lifted it up and away from her palm. He frowned at her. She mouthed "help" when she did it again. Then she gestured to her back. He nodded and followed her up.

She'd been busy when he wasn't looking. She'd washed the bedding, dusted, vacuumed. The little room was neat and clean. But no wonder. She had healing wounds all over. She pulled out a shirt that he recognized as one of his. She pulled it over her head but left it around her neck as she loosened the dress to let it hang down the way she had when he'd sketched her wounds. Gently, he covered the scabbed areas with the ointment. Then he helped settle the shirt over the sticky shoulders. He started to leave but she put her hand on his arm and made some signs that were unmistakable, even if he hadn't paid attention to her lesson. She couldn't see well enough to do everything herself. She produced a pair of his boxers. "Any other clothes of mine that you've commandeered?"

She shrugged and smiled. John helped with her rear first. As he smoothed the ointment over the curve of her ass, he realized that underwear would cut into the scabs. She could have the shorts. John helped with the front. His hands were already covered with ointment. He smoothed ointment in and around the scabs. There was no way that the pain had not been constant. When she was covered and John was wiping his hands on a towel, she took his hand in her hands and mouthed thank you. She kissed his cheek. She hugged him and climbed into bed. He watched her position herself carefully. There wasn't really a good position to sleep in. How had she ridden in the truck like that?

So he stole one of Bobby's pillows so she could have some support. Bobby cussed him out about it later. That led to other conversations. Their wives, John's boys, other hunters, new hunters, old hunters, dead hunters…

Bobby poured the whiskey. "How long you gonna keep her?"

"I hadn't thought about it." He really hadn't. He'd gotten her out of the hospital and out of Kentucky. He'd gotten her to Bobby's. He'd gotten her to sleep some nights. That's about all the thought he'd put into it.

"No voice, no memories. She doesn't have a lot of options." Bobby cleared his throat.

"She could do a lot. I mean… librarians are always shushing people." John tossed his whiskey back.

"You gotta go to college to be a librarian now." The older man grumbled.

He shrugged and poured more whiskey. "Maybe she'll remember something."

"No offense meant but… your boys were your boys. They had to put up with your… way of doing things. You won't be able to bark at her and fix anything." Bobby refilled the glasses after John emptied his. "She's had a scare and a fine looking woman like that… should be starting a family with a normal guy… not following an old fart around because he can handle a pixie."

"You're not wrong."

"You gonna dump her ass somewhere? Don't do it here."

"I'll teach her some stuff before I let her go off on her own."

"Like what?"

"Self defense. I got a couple of extra guns." John rubbed his jaw. "She's got a tight right hook."

"You know… every so often I hear a hunter will save a beautiful woman. You _always_ do… or your boys do. You're like the Captain Kirk of hunters." Bobby shook his head into his glass.

"That's _Dean_. I don't always get lucky but that boy gets more tail than I ever dreamed of when I was overseas and hadn't seen a girl in months."

"Vietnam. That was some shit. You remember when that was the worst thing you ever saw?" Bobby laughed into his glass.

Then John was laughing. If, when he was 21 years old, someone had told him that he would see worse things than what he had seen in _that_ damn country, he would have shown them his sniper corps tattoo and reminded them that he had probably _done_ worse than he'd seen over there. Hunting… _hunting_. "Remember when Hell week was the worse training you'd ever done?"

Bobby started snorting. "Shit. Hell week. I remember thinking I was gonna die on that hill and there'd be no use sending me into combat."

"I thought my ass was gonna fall right off my body. Then they stuck a rifle in my hands and told me I was gonna shoot some generals." John could laugh about it now. Since then, he'd seen his wife murdered by a demon, seen his life go up in flames, let his alcoholism get the best of him and had his boys run off on him. He'd killed werewolves, skinwalkers, a fuckin' pixie, and all sorts of spirits and poltergeists. "Uncle Sam had no idea he was training us for the deep shit."

Bobby sobered a bit. "Dean shoulda been a Marine. He'd've been good at it."

"He'd've gotten his head blown off in Afghanistan. He'd've blown himself up jumping on a bomb to save his unit." John missed his boys. Dean was a good boy. Too good. "He'd've saved a kid and gotten his unit busted up."

"He's got a soft spot for kids… and damsels in distress." Bobby nodded to himself. The night was getting deep and from the silence in the house, the girl had found some sleep that didn't include nightmares.

"You remember that semester I had the boys in Tampa?" John laughed. That had been some shit. Mostly the normal kind of shit. "I was hunting bogies. I'd kill one, find ten more. Kept me drunk and busy enough that Dean got caught up and Sam was getting ahead. Dean was working on this beautiful girl. Almost nailed her but I never found out how close to almost it was. He gets piss drunk and wakes up next to the girl's unfortunate cousin."

"How unfortunate?"

"To this day, you say Tampa and Dean does a full body shudder. This girl was unfortunate and in love with the damn kid. I think he popped her cherry. He begged me to move for six weeks. She followed him around the whole time."

"Bet that taught him to pace himself."

"Sure did. He was sober through the next three moves. Damn kid."

"Still no answer?"

"No." John poured another shot. "I'm worried, Bobby. Real worried."

"I'll keep an eye out. So will the rest of your friends."

"I don't have friends, Bobby."

"Your friends might hate you, John, but they like Dean."

That made John smile. Hunters usually liked Dean. He was just that sort of kid. Man. That sort of man. Dean was a good man. "Thank God for that."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

After leaving Bobby's, John had no clue where to go next. Darlene had packed her bag and tossed it into the back of the truck. She was going to ride with him. He'd let her for a while. They slept in the truck a couple of nights until John's own night terrors made that a little dangerous. The stress of worrying about Dean had reignited his dreams of fire. The first motel room was a relief in terms of space. She took to her bed and slept for two days straight. It let John put out his feelers for Dean once again. He called police departments and ran the plates. Nothing. Well, nothing that could help John find Dean. There were loads of old infractions all over the country that did him no good.

While he waited for return calls to any of the five cell phones he used, he taught her how to clean a gun, take it apart and put it back together. It took a couple of days for her to get it down but she seemed to have a knack for it. Then he taught her to shoot. After she got accustomed to the kick, she caught on real fast. After a month of target practice, she hit the bulls' eye every time. Then he taught her how he made cash. She didn't like the crowds of the bars but there was something under those green eyes that John recognized. It wasn't quite vengeance but Sam had it in him sometimes. This _anger_. She endured some lessons at the pool table. That's when she started laughing. Giggling. The giggles happened when John would adjust her stance; guide her hands to follow through properly. The laughs happened when the desired result was either perfect or so wrong they were lucky no one was injured.

Speech still didn't happen. The smiles were beautiful; dazzling. The blonde hair started to catch his eye entirely too often. She slept a lot during the day and not at all at night. She started hoarding motel notepads to carry around to write messages since he refused to learn sign language with her. Handwriting was the only clue he had to her moods because he had never really learned to read the female face. Scrawling script, tight caps, furious print. And those green eyes. Sometimes they had staring contests. She always won. Always laughed when she did.

John lost track of the time. It was only marked by leads on Dean and hunts that could not be left another day. She waited at the motel during the hunts if they were in the woods. She insisted on joining in on the hauntings. She caught on to the hand signals he'd taught the boys. She did drills after the first haunting that caught her off guard. He did not have to teach her first aid. The first time she had to patch him up, she wrote him a note. **"Maybe I was a nurse?"**

He'd just looked at her. "Maybe you were."

Those green eyes went far away as she touched his face. His lip was split, his forehead bleeding, bruises everywhere else. She opened her mouth as if to speak but nothing came out. She scribbled the words in that furious printing. **"I'm 28."**

"Well, as least we know you're legal. Anything else?" He shook his head when she shook hers. The words still were not there. No name. No memory except 28 years old and maybe a nurse. It was more than they had… months ago? Weeks? A year? He'd really lost track of time. Surely it wasn't as long as all that.

Darlene used her pool winnings to buy clothes and food that he wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Tofu, spinach, FRUIT. She spent days reading John's books and practicing signs that she thought were useful. She frowned a lot when she read. When John got a book on pixies, she read it through six times. She made furious notes on post-it notes and plastered a wall with them. She stared at it and studied it. She gestured emphatically from the book to the notes. She remembered some things. They weren't the good things. John added her notes to his after her frantic meltdown resulted in her choking on the words that wouldn't come out.

Her account of the events was jarring to him and he was pretty sure he'd been told worse. Maybe it was because he looked at her everyday and had no clue what she was like _before_. He watched the big green eyes spill over with tears, her lips trembling as her fingers worked at printing in those tight caps that she used when she was focused on something. Then she would jam her hand against her forehead as the thoughts became muddled.

She could never remember _before._ Just during and after. The designs had been drawn with the pixie's nails. Her clothes had been ripped off. Sweater, skirt, pearls. She frowned when she couldn't remember more. She didn't write anymore notes about anything for almost a week. A complete shutdown. John hated that. Dean had done that when he was four, right after Mary died. She only ate when he made her. One of his nightmares had brought her out of it. He'd never been so grateful for a nightmare.

Sometime after that, they were having dinner at some roadside diner. Almost no one else was in the place. She reached over and took his left hand. She pointed to the ring. It took all his strength not to jerk his hand out of hers. She wrote on a napkin. **"Where is she?"**

"Dead." John dropped his napkin on his plate. He turned his head away. She waved her napkin in his face.

**"Pixies?"**

"No. Demons." John looked back at her. She sat back and let out a breath. She tapped her wrist. John sighed. "20 years."

She ate her salad and stared at him. She always won at the staring contest. He stabbed his mashed potatoes through the napkin he'd laid down but didn't break her gaze. She had dressing all over her chin but she kept his gaze. Blindly, she reached for a napkin and her pen. She wrote without looking. John could barely read it when she held it up. **"20 years is a long time to keep wearing a ring."**

"Yeah. It is." He got up. Fine. She won. Again. She didn't laugh when he walked away.

It wasn't as if he'd never thought about it. He'd gotten laid every now and again. He wasn't going to take his ring off. _Ever_. He knew what she was getting at. He'd had that thought, too. Sharing rooms for the last however long. Seeing her silhouette through lamplight. Watching her shave her legs in the bathroom sink. And the woman still didn't wear underwear after all this time. And he _knew_ she wasn't asking him to fuck her, she was just wondering why in the hell he wore a wedding ring at all after 20 years of being a widower.

So he got drunk when they got back to the room. Drank half a bottle of whiskey and talked about his Mary and his boys. He was too far gone to read any of her notes, so she didn't write any. Then he came to in her arms. She slid a note in front of his eyes. **"You screamed her name all night. I'm sorry I asked."**

They didn't talk to each other for a while after that. Then he saw her running her fingers over the tracing he'd made of the scars on her back. There had been so many little fine lines that drawing freehand would have destroyed the image. She slid a post-it onto the steering wheel. **"The ones on my back are the only ones that are still there."**

He'd snapped his head around to look at her face. She shrugged and pulled her skirt up to show that her thighs were clean of scabs. Faint lines denoted where the wounds had been but those would soon match the rest of her. Her stomach was the same. Her back… At the next stop, he ran his fingers over the smooth skin but the marks were still there. Thin little lines. "Like a tattoo."

She winced when he used a fingernail to dislodge a remaining scab and rub at the skin beneath. The line was there. She had a pair of insect wings on her shoulder blades. She turned to him, shirt clutched against her chest. Her eyes were wide and he could read plainly what she was thinking even before she dropped the shirt and reached for his hands. She was tired of being terrified. She was tired of knowing that the last _thing_ to touch her sexually was a monster.

It wasn't a grand hardship. John handled it like a man. He did a thorough job of it. Darlene was a beautiful woman and exactly his type. Tall, thin, blonde, green eyes. She clung too tight but she had cause to. She made noise. Plenty of noise. He thought maybe she tried to call out his name but no words came out. When she was limp beneath him and he was about as solid as a noodle, John touched her face. Her eyelids fluttered, her breath came out in light puffs but she was relaxed and looked ready to sleep for the first time in a long time. He understood that. The sleep that followed was the first dreamless sleep he'd had in a long time.

After that, she always smiled at him; big broad smiles for no reason, secretive smiles like she'd figured him out at last, indulgent grins because he wasn't that funny but she liked him anyway. And the kisses; kissed his cheek for no reason, big wet kisses when they hit it big at pool, long dry kisses to his forehead when he woke from a bad night, soft kisses before she started taking his clothes off. He might have cursed her out about being a lovesick puppy and he might have threatened to leave her at a diner somewhere. She had laughed and shook her head and handed him a newspaper with the obits circled. She _cuddled_. For _no damn reason._ It freaked his shit right out. He was nearly 50, had spent the last 20 years hunting creatures that only nightmares could describe… and _cuddling_ without sex was what freaked his shit out. The simple act of being held by a woman who wasn't out for what little money he had in his wallet, probably didn't care if sex was good, and had no discernible attachment to him was so profound that he just _cried._ He'd had his moments.

Tears came after Mary died. Tears came when he realized Dean hadn't spoken in _four days._ Tears came the night he left just an hour ahead of CPS. Tears came when he realized that he would not be returning to Lawrence with his boys. Tears came when Sammy's first steps were through a puddle of John's vomit. Tears came after the striga tried to kill Sam. Tears came after he got his kids away from that crazy bitch who tried to kidnap Sam. Tears came after Dean killed his first creature in order to defend the family, he'd only been 9. Tears had come when he realized that Dean would follow any order he was given. Tears had come when he realized that Sam was not coming home.

John Winchester didn't _do_ tears. He could fuck. So, with permission, he did that instead. Darlene didn't seem to mind. She seemed to blossom under _kinder_ attention. Tag-teaming cons made the payout bigger. Men really seemed to think a mute woman couldn't play pool. It was kind of amazing. He started learning her signs so that they could con better. Her favorite line was. "I can hear, asshole. I just can't talk. You done talking shit so we can shoot pool?"

Having someone nearby was comforting but the back and forth was what helped him work. He just couldn't take his eyes off the wall to watch her signing. She didn't have Dean's knowledge or Sam's logic. He had to teach her everything. It slowed him down. So he gave her books to read as they went along. She was smart but the learning curve was sharp. What she could do really well was turn the sympathetic ear on and off for the cases. He hadn't made her any fake IDs yet but the time was coming soon.

She dressed for hunting when they hunted. All other times, she wore dresses… probably to catch his attention. It wasn't hard to get or maintain if she got in his line of sight. She was a woman possessed of the skills to get a man trapped in bed for days to die of satisfaction and exhaustion simultaneously. He'd forgotten what it was like to sleep with the same person repeatedly and for the game to change constantly.

The nights were usually spent hunting, the mornings full of screwing and the days sleeping or driving. The longer that John watched her, the more he was sure that someone should be looking for her. He knew her type. Dean had brought her type around once upon a time. John thought that maybe it had been a dare or a joke. It had never happened again. Sam had been very fond of her type. His mother had called her type hoity-toity. Classy was what Mary had called it. Sleek hair, chin high, pinky fingers raised, legs crossed at the ankle, knees pressed together and to the side. Women that John used to tip his head to and scurry away from with his eyes on the floor. That had been a long time ago.

When he had nothing to do and no focus to hunt, he watched her; sketched her as he knew her. Then he sketched her as she described herself in her vague memories just minutes before the attack. Argyle sweater, knee length skirt and a pearl necklace. Rich girl… or a nice girl with rich taste. Where were her people? Why the hell weren't they looking for her?

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It was late evening when John pulled up in his truck. Pastor Jim was surprised to find John with a female companion. He'd let them in and shown Darlene the claw foot tub. She'd smiled and disappeared with her bag. John had sighed and poured himself a drink. "We were in Kentucky. I lost Dean. Found her. It's been about a year, I think."

"She doesn't speak?" Jim looked over the books that John had brought him.

"She was attacked by a Pixie. Doctors say it's a hysterical condition. She tries every now and again but words don't come out. She can laugh, hum. No words." John shrugged. He'd just learned to work around it.

That wasn't a whole lot of information. Jim sighed. "Name?"

"I call her Darlene… she doesn't remember what her real name is. Hysterical amnesia thing." John tossed back a shot. "She barely remembers anything about the attack and nothing from before."

"And you lost Dean?"

John took a breath, poured another shot and tossed it back. "It was his hunt we were on. I was starting to figure that it was… just talk. Then he goes silent on me. No contact. I'm out in the woods looking for pixies… Then I find one. I find her. I get us back to town. Still no Dean." John shook his head. He'd run his mind around and around that hunt and he'd searched and faked authority to ask questions. Nothing. "Cell is on but he doesn't return messages."

"That's not like Dean."

"It's really not. So far the trail has been… dead. Car hasn't turned up anywhere that I can track. He hasn't been arrested… I don't know."

Jim digested that as he heard the water stop running upstairs. "I could try to search."

"He's _not_ dead." John barked. He knew what Jim was talking about and Jim could only call on a soul that was dead. "I've searched morgues and checked the police stations."

"Did you call Sam?" Jim watched John's face and didn't need an audible answer to that one. "Call your son, John. Maybe he'd want to know that you're looking for Dean."

"That kid and I… we're… No."

John took a set of books from the study and got to work. Darlene joined him later, much later. She looked fresh and soft and feminine and for some reason it made him sad. She'd been conversing with Jim and had a look around the place. She slid a stack of pictures over the desk, whapped him upside the head and left again. He didn't know the pictures had been left behind. There they were. His family. He joined them at the dinner table for a very late dinner. She held up the pictures while they spoke the language that had been theirs for the last year or so.

She raised her eyebrows and lifted a picture. John nodded. "She was beautiful. Kind. Smart. She was a good mom."

The next she lifted and tilted her head. "Yes, they were adorable once upon a time. Rug rats."

The next, the eyebrows raised again, eyes glittering. "Yes. They're handsome men now. Sam is the one with hair like a girl. Dean is the other one." She laughed and looked at the picture a bit more. "Dean's the oldest. He's 24."

She let her hands fall to the table and tilted her head at him, eyes wide. "You never asked." Eyes narrowed at him. "I'm 48." She covered her mouth and stared at him. "I never claimed to be any younger than I am. _You_ jumped _my_ bones." They stared off for a minute. "Did I not say it had been about 20 years?" She motioned a two and a four with her hands.

"I'm not experienced with dating but I'm told that age comes up before the dating process begins… usually." Jim interjected. Both of them glared at him.

They made up in bed. His hand ran up and down her back. Her fingers ran circles in his chest hair. She opened her mouth to say something but sighed wearily and didn't move her head from his shoulder. "I know."

Her belly hitched with a laugh that didn't come out. "Maybe I don't." she kissed his chest. "I didn't set out to do this. I was just hunting with my boy. I lost track of him. Then I found you. I was just going to dump your ass at the hospital and have done with it." She yanked a hair off his chest and lifted the gray hair to his eyes before tossing it away. "I deserved that." Her fingertips rubbed the sore spot where she'd ripped the hair out. "I'm a sucker for a blonde with green eyes, what can I say?"

The rumble of engines passing the house reached their ears. It was late, or early. Whichever. They should sleep. Instead, she straddled his body and stared down at him. Her eyes were so expressive, she signed and mouthed the words. **You saved me.** He followed her hands with his eyes. He'd been picking the stuff up. **Lost. Savior. Sweet. Grateful.**

"Don't know who you're talking about but he sounds like a great guy."

She shook her head at him and kissed his lips. She rode him, covered his mouth to keep his moans down, and came just as the rising sun began to pour into the room. He had no problem reading her lips. She only sighed when he didn't say anything in return. There was plenty he could have said that might have saved his ass. It was on the tip of his tongue but he'd bitten it back. There was really nothing quite like the sight of a beautiful blonde coming as the sun came up.

John was starting to lose hope. He'd picked up the phone several times to call Sam but ended up leaving another message on Dean's voicemail. This message was pleading, begging, praying. Then John got to thinking and maybe Dean was doing this on purpose. Maybe the kid had finally learned to put his foot down. Sam had, so why not Dean. He tried to drown out the memories but Dean had wanted out once upon a time. He had been tearing at the bit to be his own man once. No father to drag out of bars and no bratty little brother to look after. Maybe Dean had seen his chance and gone after it.

Darlene saw him wallowing. She held him and stroked his head. She hummed. That's when the thoughts started creeping in that maybe Dean was dead. He'd died in that hunt and John just hadn't found the body to burn. The Pixie had gotten him and that's all there was to it. Something nagged him about the whole thing. He'd been searching for so long and without a clue. Dean had left nothing behind. Not a single clue, not a bread crumb. The car should have turned up. License plates should have dinged an impound in the very least. There should have been an ad to sell it if a backwater dreg had decided to make a buck on it. Dean had kept that machine going since John handed it over for his 21st birthday. It was worth some serious money to almost anyone but it was priceless to that young man.

Driving from town to town was part of the routine. He drove. She kept the ASL book in her lap as she practiced signs and weighed their use. Some he knew just by looking. **Gun. Monster. Sex.** Then he started suggesting words he knew he used a lot. **Salt. Demon. Ghost. Silver.**

Then she started trying to give him signs. A 'J' that turned into a drawn gun. It had to be done quick to make sense and it had the odd look of a mumbling stutter when she tried it. Savior "J". That one just seemed too long for such a short name. The one that was his favorite but he barked at her to wake the fuck up…. "J" and a pierced heart. It meant something different to them both. She figured it out anyway and that's what she used to emphasize anything to him.

And for someone who couldn't talk, Darlene sure did make a lot of noise otherwise. Boots clomping, gum smacking, _moaning_. Given what sometimes happened, he didn't blame her at all. When the depression set in, she would try to talk but nothing came out. When the anger set in, she'd try to force it but nothing happened. Then she would get furious or desperate and she'd strain to make any noise that sounded like a word but would wind up sobbing until she passed out or would vomit from trying so hard.

Sometimes when she signed at him, it seemed like maybe she was just talking to herself, in a manner of speaking. Sometimes she insisted on doing the shooting on a hunt. He suspected she was gearing up for something and needed the release. She was getting better and better at shooting while moving or shooting moving objects. A mask came over her face during hunts. It was a little scary sometimes. He saw himself in a mirror during a hunt in a haunted house. His mask was the same. The mask of a hunter.

After the hunts, after the showers, after the first sleep… that's when she looked like the sweet girl she was. Cuddling and enticing with her big green eyes. Bottom lip caught between her teeth, arms crossed over bare breasts and never a pair of panties in sight. Her laugh was infectious. It always lasted until he told her they were doing another hunt. The smiles would fade, she'd frown as she read up on the monster and the mask would settle onto her face.

Sometimes she was too nice and too sweet and John needed a break from it. So maybe he picked fights with her. Maybe he sent her off to gamble on her own. Maybe he just wanted to be alone for a little while but he didn't dare dump her off somewhere. That mask could slide into place at any moment and he had the feeling she was the stuff crazy ex-girlfriends were made of.

He really had not set out to get himself a live-in girlfriend or save anyone but he had done it. Some old TV show had a saying that when you saved a life you became responsible for it. Maybe it was true. He didn't know what he'd be unleashing on the world if he decided he couldn't stand her anymore.

Still, when he kicked her out of the room, she returned with reports that she'd asked around after Dean and the Impala. John would be so grateful that he didn't have to run through it one more time with one more local that he would take her out someplace she had an excuse to get dolled up for. He hadn't planned on a girlfriend but he'd gotten one anyway.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

There had been fights. Little ones. John was an asshole and expected too much. Darlene was apparently unaccustomed to living hard and demanded too much. There had been big fights of the physical nature but mostly with John pitted against some local Slim who didn't cotton well to being taken by a mute girl at pool. There were the ongoing fights about a general lack of underwear where she was concerned and a general lack of manners where he was concerned. There were fights about why John didn't try harder to learn her signs so that they could have a _real_ conversation. There were fights about why she didn't try harder to speak. Sometimes it ended up that they didn't speak to each other for days. It was rare that they got a room with two beds during a fight. It was rare that they didn't just make up by post-it note.

This fight had started with a piece of plastic. John had no clue where they were anymore. He had no clue what they were doing. In his version of events, they hunted and kept company and occasionally fucked. Maybe the fucking was more than occasional. There wasn't a commitment. They were not making plans. Then he was staring at a pregnancy test in the motel wastebasket. It was negative but he waved the trash bin at her. "What the hell is this?"

She shrugged and made a gesture near her head before moving her hands up and down, palms up. Her smile was strained. **I thought maybe.**

It wasn't an answer. So he barked at her. "What the hell would you do with a kid on the road?"

Mouth set and eyes narrowed at him, she balled a fist at her chin and emphatically moved it forward. **I'm not.**

"How in the hell would you raise a kid you can't talk to?"

Her wrists slammed together, gesturing toward him. **Fuck you.** She grabbed her boots and escaped the room.

John deserved that. Pregnancy tests had always freaked him out. It was no reason to bite her head off. So, he waited for her to come back. He had to wait a long time. She was furious when she did. "Calm down."

Her hand snapped closed on the air. Then her hands were a flurry of things that he barely understood. That made him angry. He tossed a notepad at her, she threw it at his head.

"I don't know what the fuck we're doing!"

Her hand slammed against her chest and then she held both hands in the air, simultaneously she closed them and jerked them to the side. **I'm moving.**

It wasn't until she started throwing her things into her bag that he understood the sign. "Where are you going?"

Her hand flapped in the air. Either that was her answer or she had just dismissed him.

"What are you so mad at?"

She shook her head, a hand by her temple, a finger flicking up and down. **You know. **She didn't make eye contact as she jammed her things into her bag. She made for the door but he beat her there. She shoved at him. She mouthed the words as she signed them slowly so he could understand. **You don't understand. I love you. You don't love me. We're done, John.**

That sign she had for him. "J" Pierced heart. John let her walk out. He watched her walk away from the motel. He just stood in the doorway. It was better that she left now. She didn't need to continue fucking a man almost twice her age. She didn't need to continue to hunt the monsters that lurked in the darkness… except that he knew she would. She was a hunter now. She'd go after them by herself and she wasn't ready for the woods.

John grabbed his jacket and ran after her. She'd gone around the corner and there were people everywhere. "Darlene!" John bumped into several people as he tried to cut through the crowds. Then he started grabbing random people. "Have you seen a woman, this tall? Blonde? She just came through here."

Then he reached out and grabbed a tall guy and froze when the man spun at the touch. John's brain just exploded in that moment. He had not completely forgotten what they'd been doing for the last year but he wasn't expected the journey to end the second she walked out on him.

"Who are you?" The blonde man shouted.

"Dean?" John stared at his son. It was Dean.

"What? I can't hear. I'm deaf." He shouted again pointing at his ear. "Who are you?"

John looked his son over. He looked the same at a glance but there were changes. The hair was a little longer than Dean normally kept it. The clothes weren't as layered. The hands were greasy. John placed his hands on Dean's shoulders. All this time with Darlene had let some sign language seep through. John pointed at himself then at Dean, then lifted an open hand to his forehead.

"You know sign language!" Dean shouted with a smile and then frowned. "I'm your father? Dude. You're way off. You're like… old enough to… I don't know. I'm not your dad."

"Me." John pointed to himself and made the father sign again. "I'm the father."

"Oh! Really?" Dean looked John over suspiciously for a moment then tilted his head. Some sort of recognition sparked in his eyes. Then in Dean-style, he smiled and got excited. "Hey! Do you know my name? There are a lot of fake IDs in my car."

John laughed and hugged Dean, who was stiff at first. Then used what rudimentary sign language he knew to sign Dean's name, age, birthday and to ask where the car was.

"Black Impala? Dude. I got the car at this place I'm renting. I woke up wandering in the woods. No name, no ID. No _clothes_. It was fuckin' crazy. I've been working at this joint." Dean started walking and motioned for John to follow. "Pay is crap but turns out I'm like crazy good at pool. I can't hear so we lay bets on the chalkboard. I learned some sign language but no one uses it. It was fuckin' useless for me to learn for a while. I mean… I can talk, I just can't hear."

John needed Darlene. John grabbed Dean's arm to keep him still. "Darlene!" Hopefully, she hadn't gotten far. There she was. Arms crossed, pissed, standing at the bus stop. She shrugged at him and signed the question. "Come here! I found Dean!"

She straightened and picked up her bag to come closer. Then she saw Dean. She walked slowly as she looked Dean up and down. She motioned to John that Dean was handsome. Beautiful was actually the word she signed. She hugged John and shrugged. He understood. It didn't change anything between them. She was still in love with him and he didn't have time to love her back.

"Who is the fox?" Dean shouted.

Darlene winced and rubbed at her ear. John signed her name out and then used the sign that Darlene would understand. A d over his heart followed by a pierced heart.

"This chick stabbed you?" Dean shouted.

"Dean's deaf." John tried to use the signs so Dean would know what John was talking to her about.

She glared at him and began signing furiously. '**Now, you want to sign. Now, you want me to stay. I'm not some tool you can use and put down. I'm not a toy you can walk away and forget about."**

Dean almost started laughing. "Wow! She's pissed at you!"

"Shut up." John barked at him.

**"No. Don't yell at him."** Darlene got in his face**. 'I taught you everything. You weren't motivated enough to learn it for me. Now, you wished you had because you got him back.'**

"Are you deaf, too?" Dean shouted.

**"I hear. I don't talk."** She absently signed at him.

"Weird! I talk but I don't hear." After a beat, Dean looked between the two of them and made a face. "Are you fucking him?"

**"I was."**

"Darlene." John sighed. "What do you want from me?"

**"What you can't give."** She made the sign of a pierced heart and started to walk away.

"I am so lost! This is worse than when that damned Pixie got me!" Dean ran his hands through his hair. Darlene turned at that. She looked to John.

"I heard it." John nodded. She couldn't talk. Dean couldn't hear. A pixie had done it. John motioned her closer. She hugged him and buried her face in his jacket. "I don't know that I can love anyone. I do like you." Her chest hitched but he didn't know if it was sob or a laugh.

Dean's apartment was small but cozy. Second-hand couch, old TV, card table in the breakfast nook. Salt in the doorway, along the windows. John wondered at that. Darlene made herself at home while John had a look over his child. Darlene signed while John talked.

"You need a haircut. You never let your hair get this long." John stared at him. "What happened?"

"I don't remember a whole lot. When I do, it's like the images were sorted with a salad spinner. I've tried to put them in order but it's all guess work at this point. When I try too hard to focus on it, I get these really bad migraines." Dean touched the back of his head as if he felt one coming on just talking about it. "I suppose I was hunting this thing. I caught up to it and then I was lost in the woods. I remember looking up and thinking that I was going to be in deep shit when the sun went down but now I don't totally understand why I thought that. Literally, the next thing I can remember is a pitch black sky. Then I caught it again and it had this like… raging hard on. It was fucking creepy. That's when I pulled out the heavy artillery. I shot it with iron rounds and then used an iron knife to stab it in the heart. It disappeared.

"It was like I knew what I was doing one moment and the next, I didn't have a clue. I was holding the knife and didn't know why. I was carrying the gun not even sure if I could shoot it. At some point I looked down and my clothes were gone. No clue where they went. I still can't figure that out. I got lost but I found the gun and the knife and I hunted game to stay alive while I tried to figure out where I was.

"When I got out of the woods, the… fuzziness went away and that's when I realized that something had been done to me. I had these… cuts all over. I kept to the tree line because I was naked but eventually I came up on this car." He paused as he started to describe it. "But you know the car." John nodded and motioned for Dean to go on. "It was like it… triggered something in me. It was familiar. I didn't have keys. I broke a window and low and behold, there's a bag of clothes that fit me. Then the glove box… dozens of IDs, some with my pictures and some… with yours, I guess. So, you're my dad. Weird. Anyway, I searched the car over and ended up hotwiring it and I hightailed it out of there. I didn't know where I was going…

"I used a first aid kit in a gas station. That's where I really saw the cuts… they were…" Dean trailed off. "So, I take inventory. I got this gut feeling that I should steer away from cops and hospitals. Only when I go in to this motel with a wad of cash I found, I hear nothing. First time I noticed. The guy is talking and I freaked out. The guy is just staring at me and finally he just fills out a card and takes my money. I hole up.

"I don't find a whole lot that makes sense. I find a book about pixies. I find notes in what is apparently my handwriting. I figure I went in after the thing. With what I found in the trunk of the car… Whoa."

John laughed. Dean was still Dean. He looked at Darlene. Was Darlene still… whoever she was?

"Ghosts and monsters and demons. Pixies." Dean shook his head. "I cleaned the wounds but there was a pattern. I drew as best I could. There were more that I couldn't see. As soon as I could sit comfortably, I got on the road. I just… had to keep moving. When I felt like I was far enough away, I saw a doctor. Nothing's wrong with me. Sudden onset deafness. I talk too loud is what the doctor said. I talk out loud sometimes and don't know it. I settled here because it seemed nice. Good people. There was a sign for a mechanic.

"I stayed cause the pay was okay and the girls were really, really nice to me. One of them taught me sign language but no one else knows it so I'm screwed most of the time. I can read the signs but…" He shrugged.

"I tried to call you." John spoke, Darlene signed.

"If I had the phone on me, it's gone."

"I looked for you, everywhere." John stood. "I'm glad to see you alive and okay."

"This is just so bizarre." Dean grabbed the box from the kitchen counter. "There are so many names. I just picked one. I've been going by Bobby Plant."

"Well, you picked that name because you're a Zeppelin fan." John rifled through them. "They're all fake."

Darlene signed **'asshole.'**

"Why is she so pissed at you?" Dean shouted.

"I'm an asshole." John admitted as he copied her sign to Dean.

"So what's your name?"

Darlene signed each letter carefully. Then she jumped into her story. Dean watched her hands carefully, nodding here and there. Dean got up and paced but kept his eyes on her hands. John reached over and covered her hands. "It's a lot. Get some rest. We'll talk more tomorrow."

"Yeah. Absolutely. I just… need to let it all sink in." Dean nodded.

John and Darlene slept on the pull out couch. Her hands moved and John made himself pay attention to their movements. Sometimes it just made him dizzy. She wanted to ask Dean about the cuts he'd talked about. Dean had been lucky that his instincts had steered him clear of danger. When she had exhausted her plans and questions for Dean, she stared at his face. She explained that her period was late. She took the test to be sure. She didn't know if she wanted kids. She would like to think that any man she chose to spend her time with would want them if they came. Then she had rolled away and at least pretended to sleep.

Breakfast was like being excluded from a club. They signed so fast that John couldn't keep up. So he went and hauled their things from the motel. John tried to explain to Dean their life but Darlene didn't know all the signs. So finally, John just gave Dean his journal to read. Then Darlene got mad about that. The hands were flying so fast that even Dean couldn't keep up but the gist seemed to be that she just thought the journal was just for cataloguing evil shit. Had she known there was a family history in it, she would have stolen it to read earlier. John just didn't talk to her about his life. Then a drawing of her Pixie injuries fluttered from the pages. Dean's eyes goggled at the very detailed images and Darlene dived for the picture before John could hide it. Then John was hit and slapped into a corner. When she was done she stormed out, the picture hitting John in the face.

"She's really hot." Dean pointed to the picture in John's hands. "You draw that?"

"I forgot that I drew everything." John tried to sign but it was clumsy. When John got bored or stuck, he'd worked on the picture. There was every last bit of her naked body on the sheet.

"I read lips pretty well." Dean offered.

"Thanks. I'm not so good at the signing." John just didn't know how to talk to Dean without their short hand. His Dean knew every last thing before John said it. This amnesiac didn't.

Dean had been scanning the journal for a few minutes when he straightened. "I have a brother?"

"Yeah." John nodded.

"Where is he?"

"College. California."

"Okay." Dean nodded and kept scanning. "How long you been… _with_ her?"

"Picked her up about a year ago. I was on that hunt with you. We've been… doing whatever… Ten months or so." John shrugged. He honestly didn't know what they were doing. He just knew he was never going to stop loving Mary. She was the love of his life. She was the reason he hunted the things he hunted. Darlene… was just never going to be that for him. "Never intended for things to get intense. It just happened." He needed to change the subject. "You hunt?"

"No. I can't hear." Dean winced at a memory. "I suck at it. I remembered some stuff, I read other stuff. Salt. Iron. Exorcisms. Only… I can't hear if I'm loud enough. I just shout all the time. I can't hear myself speak so I just talk loud enough that I can feel it. No clue if I say the words right."

"So you tried? You remember stuff from _before_?"

"Not so much." Dean pulled John into the bedroom where he had a wall full of notes. "I would read something and it would bug me, so I would put it in order. The salt and iron stuff came from the books and when I started putting it to use, it just made sense. This stuff here is the proven and true stuff. This other stuff is just the stuff that still makes me feel weird."

Then John saw the map. Dean had marked spots on it. John started adding his own marks with notes. Dean started tearing through his research. When Darlene got back, they were comparing the sketches of her Pixie scars with Dean's. Dean frowned at the wings. "Bugs?"

Darlene pointed to her back and John helped her out of her jacket so Dean could see the fine little lines on her shoulder blades. Dean frowned and then started tugging at his shirt. John found one. On his right shoulder blade. Just like Darlene's. Nothing on the other shoulder blade. John watched Darlene's face and then she looked to John. John wrapped his arms around her and cleared his throat. "The Pixie raped Darlene. It did the carving and all that before it went at her."

Dean didn't get all of that. John kept one arm around Darlene and used the other to print his words. Dean's face flushed. His eyes focused on something they couldn't see and then he was rummaging through stacks of books. Then he started rambling. "Something was always off to me. I looked through everything I had. I did internet searches and I studied Tuatha legends. I expanded the search to all sorts of European lore. Pixies weren't really known for deep woods. In Scotland, Ireland and England, they were on the moors. Some trees but not dense like the woods where I walked out."

John found himself staring at a picture of a pixie in stone and he'd be damned if it wasn't what he'd seen standing over Darlene in that wood. "Standing stone."

"It's a standing stone." Dean called over his shoulder as he started looking at the map again. "The pixie that I saw with the hard on… it was _that_. It was a stone. I didn't get fucked by a pixie. I mean… not a male. I… it was a female. It was singing to me. I don't remember hearing anything after I killed her."

"Darlene was screaming. Now it's the only sound she can make."

"Where were we?" Dean turned and then looked at the new marks that John had made on his map. "Kentucky? I came out in Ohio." He tapped the map. "I walked south, though. That's where I found the car. Just over the Kentucky border."

"I interrupted." John realized. "Tuatha. They live on another plane, right?"

Dean couldn't hear him. Darlene stared up at him. Her eyes big. She covered his mouth with her hand. He nodded. She was done for the day. She left him to watch Dean puzzle over the hunt. It was a year dead but it would never be over for Dean and Darlene.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Darlene insisted on renting a room. She signed that she needed space. She started pulling away from John and John kept hauling her back. They fought. They made up. They fought. Dean was focused on capturing the resurfacing memories. Every time John picked up the pixie books, Darlene took her clothes off. She started dressing differently. Her hair smoothed back into a bun. Her makeup softer. Her posture changed. It reminded him of that time early on when her stance would ring bells in his mind.

John had gone to the pawn shop to look at the guns. His eyes had fallen on the pearls. He had no clue if they were real. The plan for two guns had gone to one gun and the set of pearls. He gave both to Darlene. He had simply set the boxes in front of her as she read the newspaper. She had raised her eyebrows at the pearls but didn't touch them. She checked out the gun, cleaned it and tucked it into her jacket. Later, she fussed around with getting pretty. She asked John to put the pearls on her. She just stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. He took her picture and set about making her a fake ID.

Then her posture changed and it really began to nag at John that no one had been looking for her. She cut such a picture. He paid her the best compliment he knew how to give. "Beautiful." She smiled and wrapped her arms around his middle. "Too beautiful to waste on an old man."

She just ran a hand over his beard and disappeared into the night. She returned in the middle of the night. The smile soft, her breath full of rum and took off everything but the pearls. She signed to him that she looked but the young men were too young, untried and unburdened. The older men were too dumb, self-absorbed and soft. The old men were too wrinkled. He'd laughed and shook his head at her.

The next morning they had a serious conversation about Dean. The man was lost and beginning to spiral with the new information on who he was. Darlene would know. She had done the same when they had learned more about the pixie. John packed the room up and stood in front of Dean's apartment for a long time. When he finally made it inside, Dean had expanded his project to cover every wall of the apartment. He had routes outlined. Marked spots where cars had turned up with no owners, pasted missing persons posters where they were last seen. There was no real pattern. They were from all over Appalachia. The damned pixies had the run of the woods.

It took four hours of convincing but Dean had agreed to hit the road. He insisted on taking his research. The drive was longer than it needed to be. Darlene slept on John's shoulder. Dean kept his hands on the speaker. John turned the radio as loud as Darlene could stand it. Turned up the bass. Dean gave him a sad smile.

When John passed the turn off for Minnesota and then kept driving through passed Bobby's, Darlene grabbed his arm. John kept his face pointed dead ahead. "We're going to someone else."

John had a friend in Nebraska who was a little more in tune with the tales from overseas but who was generally a bit of a dick. He and Dean got along swimmingly. He also had a lot of guns and equipment. John had met Caleb several years into this life. The kid was a newcomer but had learned fast. The young man was puffing on a cigarette when they pulled up to the farmhouse. He just smiled and nodded at them when he recognized who was in the truck.

"Winchester! You son of a bitch, it's been forever!" Caleb called out as he stubbed out his cigarette.

John climbed out of the truck and helped Darlene down. "I know it. I need your help."

"Please tell me you need to relieve yourself of that hot blonde."

Darlene looked at John and scoffed. She almost climbed back into the truck. John pulled her back to him. "He's just joking, darlin'."

"I might not be. That Dean passed out in there?" Caleb attempted to peer into the truck.

"Yep… Let's leave him for a minute. I got a story to tell you and it's easier to tell when he can't do any talking." He kept his arm around Darlene.

Caleb's house was clean and neat but just as chock full of books and guns as any hunter's. He got them beers and motioned for John to begin. Darlene sipped her beer as John relayed how he'd lost Dean and found Darlene. "We've spent the last year running around trying to get a lead on Dean. It was a fluke that we found him. He's… We compared research and now he's tail-spinning."

"Dean? Tail-spinning?" Caleb got them all fresh beers. "That don't seem like him."

"He's got no memory of being a hunter. He's learned all over again but lucky for him the tools were all at his disposal." John sighed. "He's… determined to solve it. I need help with him. I can't…" He looked to Darlene. "She just wants to forget what happened and Dean can't let it go. If… the numbers are right. I killed one. Dean killed another but there are two out there in those woods. Dean and Darlene got lucky, after what happened in there, they're still here. Maybe minus some communication skills but we've been working around it."

Caleb rubbed a hand over his bald head. "So, she's mute but hears fine. He's deaf but talks fine."

"Yeah." John squeezed her knee.

"Well, I got some space. I got a lot of books. I don't know if I got anything on pixies." Caleb stood and looked out the window toward the truck. "I can't imagine Dean spiraling. Let's go bring him in." He jumped up. "How do you… I mean if he can't hear?"

"They both sign." John shrugged and earned an elbow in his gut from Darlene.

"Oh… I see. She's taken." Caleb shrugged and headed out to wake up Dean. They returned a few minutes later hauling the bags and Dean's heavy box of notes and books.

"Dude, you seem cool." Dean was talking at the top of his lungs.

"Thanks, man." Caleb turned to Dean so Dean could see his lips. "We'll set up in here."

"So much wall." Dean grabbed the box and started tacking things up as he made sure they went up in order. He talked as he worked. Darlene kept in his line of sight so she could sign to him what the other men were saying. "Pixies!" John winced and tapped his ear. Darlene signed that Dean was too loud. "Right. Sorry. Fuckin' pixies, though. Fuckers aren't fucking around."

Caleb picked up a book and looked at the drawings. "So… you go into the woods looking for this thing. Your perception gets all wonky."

"You think they were bending reality?" John asked.

"It makes sense. I mean…" Caleb looked at the notes on the map before the map went up on a wall. "You enter the woods here and come out here. That's a long fucking way… even for two to four days stumbling around. What lore are we looking at?"

"Tuatha." Dean answered.

"You know that Tuatha just means… people. Man. You. Me. People." Caleb snorted.

"Look! The Tuatha legends match." Dean stared to get riled up.

"I'm sure they do. Just… use the right words, man." Caleb picked up another stack of paper.

Darlene turned to John and signed asshole. He nodded. John cleared his throat. "Okay. So, Dean goes into the woods looking for the thing and somehow gets lost though he's an excellent hunter and doesn't ever get lost. This thing starts fucking with him…"

"You said it raped the girl…" Caleb trailed off as he looked to Dean.

Darlene glared at Caleb but chose her signs differently. Dean bowed his head and signed back to her. She took a deep breath and blinked back tears. She signed to John. **"Girl pixie, can't remember if he… finished."**

"Dean." John put his hands on his son's shoulders, the boy stiffened.

"What'd I miss?" Caleb called out.

"She said he said it was a female that had him. He doesn't know if he finished."

"Ew." Caleb shook his head. "So, rapes her, rapes him. Dean fought back, I'm sure. Darlene here…"

"I think she fought back but it overpowered her." John rubbed his jaw. "She's got a mean right hook."

"Alright. So two pixies die and they take speech and hearing." Caleb shrugged.

Dean repeated everything he'd told his dad and Darlene back in his apartment. While they did that, Darlene sat on John's lap and buried her face in his neck.

Caleb turned to John. "How did you figure out her name?"

"We didn't. I just made something up."

"No APBs match?"

"Not a one."

"Shown her picture around?"

"Here and there." John nodded.

"I got a new computer. New software. Sam hooked me up this spring." Caleb clapped his hands together. "Let's see if we can't get a pattern on this thing."

The software made Dean's project easier. None of the victims were found. Dean ruled out people who had turned up in morgues. Then he ran his dates from the cars abandoned. The pictures of the owners were all along one wall. Darlene ran around the room and hit each man in turn and pointed to the pictures. She gestured to her own face. John watched her as she lifted her hair and pointed at her eyes. "Son of a bitch, she's right."

Caleb peered at each face and tilted his head and then looked at Dean. Peered at his eyes. "Dude… you got green eyes?"

Darlene nodded emphatically. John noted that beyond being blonde and green eyed… all the folks on that wall could be in magazines. They were all handsome or beautiful. Darlene left the room a moment later. John found her puking her guts out in the yard. He held her hair back. She leaned on him and turned her face skyward.

John didn't know why he did it. He scanned the picture he'd taken of Darlene and loaded it on Caleb's software. She was beautiful. She had the kind of face that was noticed, that would be missed. Where in the hell were her people? He searched the missing persons bulletins in Kentucky where he'd found her. Nothing. Then he checked Ohio, where they had found Dean. Then another state on the same stretch of wood. There were no pictures but there was a basic description that matched the time frame and her basic details. Her name was Claire Reid. She was a school teacher. She'd served in the Air Force and was honorably discharged due to pregnancy and failure to secure a family care plan. She was not married. She had no children. She had no family.

It took several searches but he did discover that the child had died at age 5; hit and run. The pictures of Clare Reid were hard to come but the ones he found were dazzling in their beauty. She had a very photogenic face. A very composed posture. Except the one with her kid. Wide smiles on both faces. Whatever man had knocked her up and left her to deal with it alone had been an asshole to let that slip away.

Darlene was helping Dean understand something Caleb was explaining. John didn't know how else to do it. He walked into the living room and leaned against the one wall they weren't using to watch them. She was wearing the sweater and skirt and pearls. "Claire."

Her head turned and she made a face at him. She hadn't even heard the name. Caleb turned. "Who's Claire?"

"Senior Airman Claire Reid." John addressed her. She shook her head at him and did John's sign for her. "I made that up and you know it. I was being cute with that Darling Darlene business." John held out the printed sheets to her. She ripped it out of his hands and started reading.

"Why is everyone staring at Darlene?" Dean shouted.

Darlene started signing to him. She stared up at John. The signs were unmistakable. She had a son and her son was dead. He'd died just a year ago. Right before she'd been attacked by the pixie. No one was looking for her because there was no one left and any cops who knew she was missing probably figured she walked off a bridge. Dean yanked a report out of his bundle. "Look. There's this car that was found on the side of the road. It had seven suitcases in it but nothing else. They found pieces of a necklace in the ditch nearby. Plates were registered to Claire Reid from Kansas. The car was in West Virginia."

Darlene stormed out of the house. Claire, her name was Claire. John got caught up on what Caleb and Dean were working on. Dean was full of theories. Dean didn't need anyone to talk back to him. "I mean, look up pixies. You get referred to half a dozen other creatures that are similar in a dozen different cultures. The lore is so old that no one has any accounts and if this is how they run things, it's no wonder.

"The standing stones are not unique to pixie lore but there was a fuckin' standing stone there. The bitch lured me in with singing and probably a glamour. Every season two people go missing. They're never found. I've been looking and the pattern broke with us but it didn't stop. Every other season now. There were two sets doing this. Dad Killed one, I'm pretty sure I got the other. Why? I don't know. I do think I know that I made it to twilight before things got weird."

"What about me? I was in those woods, too." John waved his hand. He had to repeat his question slower.

"You are neither blonde nor hot, old man." Dean waved him off. "There's another set of pixies. We need to stop them."

"Dude. How are you going to hunt these things if you don't know they're coming?" Caleb had to repeat himself when he finally got Dean's attention by throwing wads of paper at him.

"You don't need to hear this thing." Dean insisted. "When it's near, the world goes quiet. That's how I didn't know I was deaf until I'd been out of the woods awhile."

"He's right. The forest… dies." John nodded to Caleb. "Iron rounds. Iron blades."

"Why twilight, though?" Dean mused aloud.

"Well, the lore I found all says the same thing." Caleb lifted the book he'd been reading. "Twilight and pre-dawn are when we can cross over. The books are consistent with four cities that the Tuatha De Danann came from… and are only accessible at that time. Twilight."

"Caleb, dude. When you over-enunciate to make it clearer to me what you're saying… I don't get squat. Stop screwing up the natural movements of your mouth, man." Dean smacked him and made him say it over again. Dean nodded. "That makes sense. Those four cities…"

"Legendary. They say it's where the Tuatha de Danann got their powers. They came on ships in clouds of darkness that swallowed the sky and light for three days and nights. Legend states they burned their ships after disembarking so that they couldn't retreat." Caleb looked to John. "Supposedly these guys were the children of the goddess and they had a good run as rulers in Ireland."

"Think maybe one of these ships landed here?" John asked.

"Been no evidence but let's say the Irish Tuatha De Danann were power hungry and the pixies who came here were… just hungry."

"No. Doesn't track." Dean shook his head. "Those old kings… they all died or were defeated… the bloodline… what? Died out, dwindled down. Why else would these things be raping? Where are these people going? Do they not survive? Are they… breeding for stock?" He looked at each in turn. "We can't let them keep doing this."

"You're right." John nodded.

Caleb looked to John. "Your girl gonna be alright?"

"Yeah. She's made of the strong stuff." John nodded.

Darlene got a room in town. A single. She wanted space. He met her there after a day. She had a list for him. Numbers to call since she was limited in her ability to communicate; police stations, military bases, friends she found on Facebook He spent the day calling them for information while she paced around the room. He pieced the story together, taking notes as he talked. Sebastien Reid was her son. He was fathered by a man stationed in Bosnia during her tour. The man was killed by a bombing in Kosovo before Claire had figured out she was pregnant. That info had come from one of her comrades in arms who worked at a VA center after taking shrapnel to her back. Her information led to more friends who had more pictures. Claire had sat with the photo paper and a printer as she printed out the pictures of herself and friends and her son, who had been a cute kid and displayed prominently on the kiddie soccer league's webpage. A memorial. Claire's folks had died in a car accident when she was overseas. Before Claire had met the Naval man who had knocked her up.

She sifted through the pictures over and over and cried. She slept for two days. John checked in with Caleb and Dean who were arguing over the best plan of attack. He left them to it and took the truck to town to be with Claire. She kept him in bed for a day. When he'd started calling her Claire, she got pissed and beat the snot out of him. So he just kept calling her Darlene. When she wasn't fucking his brains out, she was searching for herself on the internet. She learned a lot about Claire Reid.

Claire Reid: Born July 31, 1973 in Kansas City to a wealthy family. She was a girl scout. She was in her high school choir. She'd joined the Air Force against her family's wishes. They died while she was helping to keep the peace in Bosnia. She met the Naval man briefly afterward. He died. She found out she was pregnant. Unable to deal with the loss of her family, she applied for discharge as she had no family care plan, having no family. She completed a semester of school before her son was born on June 12, 1996. She continued her schooling and was a teacher in training when her son was killed by a hit and run driver on the street where they lived. Claire had packed up their things and left Kansas.

She wrote everything down and it seemed to calm her down. At night, she lay in bed and stared at the pictures. John watched her at it, held her sometimes. "He was a nice looking boy."

He had to concentrate as she explained the familiarity she had for the boy's image but the disconnection to his person. She placed the picture in the front flap of her journal. She told him that they should probably rescue Caleb from Dean. He nodded. "Why do you think Dean was able to pull so much of his memory up?"

She pointed to her back and held up one finger. She shrugged.

"One wing. Hmm." He frowned.

She sat up, sheet falling away as she turned toward him. She signed slowly. **I want to help Dean finish the hunt.**

"Why?"

**I want to remember my son.**

**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Caleb bowed out of the hunt. He was done with Dean. John didn't blame the man. The younger man did, however, toss John a thumbs up with regards to Darlene, or Claire, that Darlene had almost slapped the man for. John had just hauled her back and steered her to the truck. Caleb shrugged. "The woman's hot. Too hot for you. It's fuckin' _tragic_ is what it is."

"You know, Caleb… you're actually a good person. If you acted less like a jackass, maybe you'll get a girl someday." John told him.

"I get plenty of girls." Caleb grinned but the thing that Caleb and Dean shared was in that grin. Caleb wasn't looking for a nice girl. He was looking for the next bad girl to keep for a few entertaining nights. "You take care of that one, huh? She seems nice."

Dean had watched the exchange before hefting his box into the back of the truck. He shook Caleb's hand. "Are we like… buds?"

"Totally." Caleb nodded. "When you can hear again, swing by. New bar in town. Hot chicks."

"I'm in." Dean grinned and paused before shaking his head. "Yeah. I'm in."

"Take care. You still owe me from the last hunt I helped out on." Caleb waved and sent them on.

When Caleb was a speck in the rearview, Dean looked to his father over Darlene's slumped figure. She had headphones on. "How did he get into hunting?"

John thought he knew all the signs but didn't know if he could do them while driving. At a red light, he signed quickly and spoke quietly. "Caleb was engaged when he was young. 18 or 19. His girlfriend went missing. They found her raped and killed. Jefferson, another hunter, was hunting the thing. Killed it a few weeks later. Met Caleb while he was trying to do the same… only Jefferson knew it was a possessed man turned serial killer and Caleb didn't."

When the light turned green, John got them onto the freeway. Dean was quiet for a long time. "He's a dick to scare women away."

"About sums it up." John shrugged.

"Why are you a dick? Cause something killed Mom?"

John swallowed down a lump. Dean didn't remember the years and years of politeness and protocol that John had beat into his head. Dean had a smart mouth on him, just like his old man. "Yeah."

"Why don't I have a girl? I mean… I'm… 24… I've dated a few girls since I came to in Ohio. I… back off after a while… before it gets serious. Why?"

"You dated a girl. Two weeks. Long time for you. You're… uh… sort of a ladies' man. It didn't go well. You told her what we do. She kicked you out." John didn't sign but Dean was reading his lips carefully.

"Huh." Dean faced the road again. "Guess all hunters are just fucked up."

Dean had a plan. John was going to have to trust the kid. He had trusted Dean when he was eight years old to watch Sammy by himself. He could trust the 24 year old to plan a hunt.

The dates were insignificant, Dean had said. The thing was the right bait. Both Darlene and Dean fit the profile. Dean led them to West Virginia, right where Darlene had originally entered the wood. John was supposed to wait on the road. That had lasted about an hour and then he was charging into the wood after them. Twilight came but John didn't see any of the signs that Dean had said he would see. There were no halos, there were no tricks of the light, there was no singing, there were no figures darting from tree to tree. He kept them in his sight but he kept out of theirs. They had a pack each with provisions. It would take time. Dean had been missing for two days before he'd gotten caught. No clue how long Darlene had been in the wood. John still didn't know how a girl pulled over with a flat in West Virginia could end up in Kentucky. Or how a fellow hiking in Kentucky could wind up in Ohio.

John had fallen asleep at some point, leaning on a tree while he just rested his eyes for a minute. He heard the shouts and snapped to. Iron blade at the ready, he charged through the wood. Echoes and shouts and screams. He stepped into a clearing just in time to see Darlene swing her blade into the chest of the pixie. John stabbed it from behind. The pixie screamed until it bled out but neither one pulled their blades out until it was a limp mass of green skin and its tongue lolled out of its mouth. Darlene helped him dig the pit and toss it in; she hacked off the head… just to be sure. She was covered in pixie blood. Then John looked around. Dean was gone.

They charged through the wood. Darlene kept wandering off… then John let her and he followed. When daylight made its appearance, they stopped to rest at a brook. She cleaned off what blood she could. After another two days they agreed to make for the road. A quarter mile from the road, John saw the standing stone. Darlene stared at it for a long time. Then she shoved it to the ground, burying it in moss and leaves. She signed to him that she and Dean had both touched it on their way in. They were _compelled_ to.

Dean was waiting on the road, covered in blood and eating a protein bar. John smiled. "Good to see you again, son.

"Yeah, good to see you two, too." Dean's head snapped up before he jumped to his feet. "I heard you."

"You heard?" John felt relief flooding his chest.

"I can hear." Dean jumped to his feet and whooped. Then he looked to Darlene. "How about you?"

Darlene looked to John. Her voice was hoarse. "I'm glad that shit is done." John hugged her, she clung back. "Oh holy shit, I can talk again."

Dean looked around. "So… uh… where do you think we are?"

It was a long hike to the next town. It was a little backwater town in Georgia. They washed up in a bathroom, bought clothes in exchange for one of John's guns, then hitched over to a town that would take one of John's credit cards. They took a bus to West Virginia then hiked out to the car. Dean talked just to hear himself. Darlene joined in so that she could regain use of her voice. John found that Darlene's voice was soft and raspy by nature. When they picked up the car, the memories started coming back. Darlene stared at the stretch of road and sat down to stare at the trees.

Dean got the car warmed up and John took a seat next to her. "What is it?"

"My whole life was in that car. Pictures of my baby. My clothes. His clothes. I was going to New York to try to start over. Get lost in the city. The tire blew out." She wiped at her eyes. "I was halfway into changing it when I heard the noise. I've never been too fearful of the woods. I walked into the tree line to find it. I didn't see anything and it was dark, twilight… I put my hand on the standing stone and turned around to get back to the car before I lost the light. That's when it grabbed me." She fiddled with the pearls that John had given her. "The necklace was my mom's. She'd given it to me when I was sixteen. My parents talked about disowning me when I enlisted. They wanted me to go to college, join a sorority, find a man, be a teacher or a secretary."

"But you joined the Air Force."

"To serve my country. I was good at it. The car accident shook me up. I was in _Bosnia_ and they were just driving home… I was up for Staff Sergeant. I had a one night stand with a fuckin'… He said he was a _Seal_. He wasn't. He died about a week later, somewhere in Kosovo.… Then when I found out I was pregnant… They sent me home… discharged me when I couldn't prove a support system." She looked at him. "I loved that kid. I used my Montgomery to go to school, be a teacher. I'd just gotten started at a high school when he died. He was all I had."

"Drunk driver?"

"Don't know. He was playing with some friends down the street. Genevieve Walters was watching them. She turned around to yank a weed from her garden at the same time a car barreled around the corner. No one saw it but the other kids and most of them were too little to know to look at the license plate. Another little boy was hit but he just had a broken leg." She clung to his arm. "I didn't know what to do. I had some money from my parents. I just… buried him in Kansas City. Then I started driving. I don't know why I decided to go the way I did. I mean… I drove straight across the woods and the mountains I was almost on the other side when I turned off to go north."

"You want to track down your car?"

"No. I think I'm done with that life. It's never going to be more over than it is now. I still don't know what to do."

"You're a woman possessed of many skills. Trust me on that."

"I am." She looked to him.

"Go be a teacher. Marry some man. Have some kids."

"It's an idea." She nodded and got to her feet. John stood and guided her over to the car. They let her stew in the backseat all the way to Florida. They'd had enough of the woods for a while.

John looked his son over. Dean ruffled his own hair. New hair cut. He winked at his dad as he tossed the hair products that Amnesia-Dean had used into the trash can. "So… you remember?"

"Yeah." Dean nodded. "I was supposed to meet up with you but… I got distracted."

"Pixie?"

"Well, it was a pixie-_cut_ on a chick with a huge rack. Then I went into the woods and then the pixie got me." Dean got quiet. "I was gonna leave." He watched his father's face. "You knew?"

John had to be honest with himself. Dean had been itching to go since before Sam had gone. "I figured."

"I thought that a big hunt like that would… I don't know…" He hopped up on the counter. "I'm not smart like Sammy but I get the job done."

"You're plenty smart, Dean. You figured this thing out. I didn't. I… don't see the big picture sometimes cause I'm focused on the little bits." John sighed. "Or I ignore all the little bits cause I'm chomping at something too big."

Dean was smart. He knew what his dad was talking about without prying. "She loves you, Dad. It's sick and gross and so very wrong but… it's true."

"I know." John sighed.

"If… I know that you loved Mom. I loved her too and I know that it's different… but there's no reason not to love this Claire girl back."

"I know. There's no reason except that I _don't_." John shoved his hands into his pockets. "I'm an asshole, Dean. I'm out of practice for being a gentleman. Hunting burned it up. I loved your mother more than I have words to explain. The pain that I felt when she died… sometimes I wake up and I still feel it just as strong. Like it just happened. It's been… over 20 years and I still feel it like… like it was last night that I got up to check on Sammy cause I couldn't sleep. Cause I didn't want to wake her. Cause I kept having this dream that I died."

"You dreamt that you died?"

"I've had this dream for years. Since I was just back from Vietnam. I dream that I'm reaching for your mom and the lights just go out. I had it that night. I jumped out of bed and I was afraid to wake her. She hadn't been sleeping much. Sammy was giving her a hard time some nights. I checked on him. I checked on you. I found a war movie on TV to put my mind on something else. I must have fallen asleep finally cause then I woke when I heard her scream." John leaned in the doorway. "I just… I feel it every morning. Like it was just last night we went to bed together and I lost her sometime in the night. It's burned me up for 20 years. I got nothing to give anyone else."

Neither of them knew Claire, Darlene, had been standing there until the door shut after her. She was used to being quiet. She'd had no choice for a year.

She disappeared on them. John figured he knew where she went but it was a little closer to hell than he liked to wander. After a week, Dean took off after her. John drove straight to Kansas and found the little town she had grown up in, raised her son in, near Kansas City. The cemetery was empty but he found her sitting on a bench overlooking the soccer field. She was dressed like a normal person. "Sometimes I forget and I start signing when I talk."

"I look at people's hands like they're going to start signing to me."

"It's just weird. It was only the last year of my life but I can feel the words stuck in my throat. My hands rise and do the talking when I'm upset. When I can't sleep, I roll over and I reach for you. It's just a stupid little rental but it's got a double bed and I only sleep on half. I've talked to a few people. No one knew I was missing." The sob caught in her throat. John sat beside her and took her in his arms when the tears came fast. "Who lives a life where no one cares where they went?"

"Darlene—"

"Claire. My name is Claire."

"Claire, people _let_ themselves forget. It's easier than thinking about the horrible things that can happen to people you care about. I was a man with a family, who was known to his community, who disappeared in the night. If I walked back into town now, no one would know who I am. I am not the person I was 20 years ago."

"This was a year, John. A _year_. People remember Sebastien but they don't remember me. Why am I beholden to no one? What did I do with my life?"

"Some people would prefer it this way."

"Like who?"

"Some hunters. Bobby for one."

"Bobby…" Darlene snorted. "He's nice. People would notice if he's missing."

"I would. Dean would. No one in Sioux Falls would. He keeps to himself. Doesn't cause trouble." John rubbed her shoulder. "I'm sorry that no one saw you for who you were."

"Who I am." She turned to face him.

"You got people who see you for who you are."

"Where?"

"I knew where to find you. Dean took off looking for you weeks ago… but he doesn't know you the way I do."

She laid her head on his shoulder and let the tears fall. "I was just some mute girl you saved from a monster."

"Kept my mind focused while I looked for Dean. Left to my own devices, I tend to drink and start fights." He watched the kids running across the field. "I remember when Dean was little, he played T-ball. We went to practice twice a week, had games on Saturdays. It was normal. It seems like a faraway dream these days. I look at the man he's become and I can't see that little boy anymore. You can still have that life. You don't have a record like I do. You can get a job, find someone and have kids."

"No, I can't. I close my eyes and I see the eyes in the darkness. I can feel the ghosts. I hear the whispers."

"It never goes away once you learn to listen for it." He warned gently. He should have set her ass down somewhere a year ago.

"Let me come with you."

"I can't make you any promises."

"I'm not asking for any."

"Claire. Take your out while you can."

"John, I was raped by a fucking _pixie_. I'm pretty sure the God damned off ramp was a long fucking way back." She looked up at him while she dried her eyes on the arms of the sweater draped over her shoulders. "I helped kill that motherfucker. I've hunted monsters with you. My world is pretty fucking far from normal."

"You cuss like a sailor."

"I'm a Senior Airman." She corrected. "Fucking jarhead."

He laughed. She really was in the Air Force. "My boys have been doing this their whole lives." John started to say more but he thought about that last conversation with Dean. "I've run them both off. Dean was going to leave me in Kentucky. He had one foot out the door and then he got grabbed by pixies and then he was living a normal life. I ruined that for him when I found him."

"You saved him. He hated being deaf. He would have eventually figured it out."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, I think he would. I would dream about the woods and the pixie. It got clearer and clearer but harder to put the actions in order." She stared off into space. "Now it just feels like a bad dream but when I think about how scrambled everything was… I feel like I could reach through the woods. Like the longer it got into carving me up, the better I was able to see something beyond the woods."

"You think you were seeing the…"

"Tuada or whatever you called it."

"Tuatha's homeland?"

"Right." She straightened. "Let's stop talking about this. You want to get out of here?"

"Whatever you want Claire."

"Darlene."

"Okay. Darlene."

At the motel, she took her time getting his clothes off and peeling off her own. She kissed him deeply, clung to him. She took everything he gave. John held onto her. She was so beautiful. Then when she was asleep, she looked so young. He brushed the hair off her back and ran his hands over her smooth skin. The wings on her back were gone… as if they'd never been there. Just like magic.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Drinking. It's what John did. He'd refrained for a long while because he'd put himself in charge of a mute amnesiac while searching for his first born. Dean was found. Dean was restored. So was Darlene, Claire, or whatever she felt like calling herself. He knew she liked to talk because she used to sign to him a lot. He had underestimated how much she would talk when she was able.

Not that she had done a whole lot of talking. He was just used to the silence. After they had found Dean, she had resumed her chosen role in John's life. She was his girlfriend, for lack of a better word or a total redefinition of their paths. She studied lore, she helped on hunts. She reverted to the minx she'd been before they'd solved the pixie problem; before they'd figured out her true identity; before they'd found Dean; before her professions of love had been rebuffed; before she'd peed on that damned stick.

Sex kitten Darlene was in full force. John let her be for a while but the strip teases were hard to ignore. Blow jobs were impossible to refuse. The eyes were the clue. Wild and desperate and he was afraid of what she'd do if she took off. So he let her have her way and said what she needed him to say; that he liked her well enough to let her hang around and continue doing what they were doing. He still got that vibe from her like she might be a crazy ex-girlfriend if he tried to cut her loose.

Only once more he asked if she would settle down and stop running around with him. She had stared at him. It was an option but not one she seemed to consider as viable. He almost told her to go hit on Dean but she was attached to John. John was the one who had saved her. John was the one who had taken on her burden, showed her who she really was. Darlene really felt like John was the person she would cater her life around.

Dean grinned when he walked in with the laminator. He set up his studio and put all his supplies in order. If there was anything that Dean did best, it was making fake ID cards. "I've got a system down."

"Trust him." John laid out the clothes she'd need to pull off what Dean was setting her up for.

He watched and drank as she smoothed her hair back and laid her makeup bare. A button blouse with a stiff collar. She stood in front of the sheet. That one was FBI. The next was HS. After that, he had her put on too much makeup and got her a few sets of park rangers and highway patrol. Then he told her to get pretty. John emptied his flask and watched the pictures get cut for the IDs. The last sets were for some run of the mill fake ID to get rooms and set up PO boxes and the occasional locker.

Then Dean laminated each and tested them for credibility. John finished off the bottle of whiskey by the time they were tossed in the box with the rest of the ID. John and Dean and Claire all in the box. All lies. All fake. It was about then that Dean saw how far into the bottle John had gotten himself and tried to get Claire to go grab dinner with him.

"Bring me a burger." John mumbled.

"You want onions?" Claire asked before Dean could get her out the door.

"Who in the hell eats a burger without fuckin' onions?" John barked at her.

"We got it. Onions. No pickles. Extra mustard." Dean shoved Claire out the door ahead of him.

Claire nursed her hurt feelings all the way to the diner. She gave Dean her order. He came back with food. Dean sat for a moment. "When we get back, I'll go in and give him his dinner. He's going to send me for alcohol. I'll let him know you're keeping the car running cause we have to hit the other side of town."

"Why do you have to lie to him?"

"It's not a lie. We're going to drive across town to buy some beer and whiskey. He's not going to question it." Dean shook his head. "Eat your burger."

She picked at it. She watched Dean duck the flask when he escaped the room. Dean took his time driving to the liquor store. He ate his burger in the parking lot before going in to buy more liquor than she felt should be near John given how much he'd already drunk. She didn't ask and she ate what she could.

"Halloween is in a few days."

"So?"

"My mom died a few days after Halloween." Dean explained. "I was four. Sammy was a baby. Dad was downstairs, asleep on the couch when it killed her. This time of year, he drinks and stews and I just stay out of his way."

"He didn't do this last year."

"Well… he was distracted… probably."

"You're right. He was kind of freaking out. He was calling your cell constantly and glued to the internet and calling morgues…" She told him. "He really loves you."

"Well, he is my dad."

"Sam, too. I could never get him to talk about the two of you much. When he did, he was drunk. He told me a little bit about her."

"He never talks about her." Dean warned. "It's been 20 years and he doesn't talk about her… to his own kids." He cleared his throat. "Talking isn't what he does. He can give orders, bark them. He can lecture on gun maintenance and lore for hours. He just doesn't talk." He stole Claire's fries. "He's going to drink himself into a stupor. Then he'll pass out. He'll wake up sometime tomorrow night. He'll remember the date, then he'll rinse and repeat."

"You just let him?"

"There's no stopping it. I've watched him do it for 20 years. It's best to just stay out of the way and don't take anything he says to heart." When he met her eyes, she could see that he'd tried to follow his own advice and hadn't quite convinced himself.

When they returned with the alcohol, they realized that one of them should have stayed behind. John's dive into the bottle was deeper than expected. John cut into Dean first. Dean's head ran too hot, chased tail too often, lucky he didn't have an STD. Dean almost turned and walked out but he didn't want to leave her alone with him. Then John cut into her. She was needy and desperate and a God damned dreamer. Then he had stared at the two of them, sitting next to each other at the table, heads bowed. That's when he accused them of fucking each other. Every word cut deeper than the last. Then Claire signed to Dean to go. He hesitated a moment but she repeated the sign and turned her attention to John where he paced with his bottle and muttered to himself.

An hour later he seemed to have forgotten that he'd called her a whore. She had planned to ignore him while she read a book. She thought she had done a pretty good job until he settled next to her and tried to feel her up but he was too drunk. He passed out with his face pressed into her rib cage. When she was sure he was out, she went for a walk. Dean was sitting on the car in the lot. He looked at her and glanced at his watch. "Right on cue."

She kept walking passed him. It wasn't a joke to her and she suspected that it wasn't a joke to him either. When she finally climbed back into bed, it was near dawn. She'd put out the sign. She assumed Dean got his own room. When she woke, it was late afternoon and John was already in a new bottle. Dean had brought food by. Hers was cold. She took her shower and watched him spiral. When he reached for her, he had booze coming out of his pores. She shoved him into the shower but after losing the battle with the shower curtain, he tried to leave.

So, she did the only thing she had left in her arsenal. Seducing a drunk wasn't hard but keeping his attention was. She told herself that she could handle this once a year. Keeping him busy. He'd love her back someday. She would stay by him and he would see that he was underestimating her. The feeling of hope died when he was finished and limp and falling asleep and he called out the wrong blonde's name.

Dean sat on a concrete pylon. He stared into the distance. "He never talks about her. Sammy and I… we… _Sammy_ used to ask. Then I begged him to stop. Because of this. He drinks and spirals and I drag his ass out of bars."

"It's why you were leaving." She sighed as she studied his face. It was the most serious she'd seen him. Even when he'd been divining the purpose of the pixies, he hadn't looked like this. This was… a man in pain.

"Dad _sees_ a lot. He doesn't _talk_ a lot. He's… a rock. Nothing shakes him… except _this. Always_ this. He'll disappear for two weeks. He'll get drunk and say shit he doesn't mean. It's not about me or Sammy… or you. It's about _her_. He's been… _lost_ for 20 years."

"I can see that." She crossed her arms. "My son… he was… amazing. I don't really know what his dad was like. I couldn't tell you if Sebastien took after him or not. Sebastien was all I had. The son of a bitch who hit him… If I ever catch him or her… that's a dead person."

"You don't seem like an angry person."

"Ask your dad. I can get mean. A year ago, I didn't know him from Adam. My son… was five. He was playing with his friends. This asshole ran him over and killed him and broke another kid's arm. This asshole is lucky to be alive."

"I don't blame how you feel but you don't… You also don't look like an airman."

"Good. No one sees it coming."

"You are something ferocious, Claire." He smiled at her.

"I've got nothing left to fight for."

"Then why are you here?"

"Cause it's all I got left and I'm pretty sure I never really had this either." She walked off and Dean could see the struggle. For the last year she'd been in flannel and jeans and setting things on fire. She used to handle guns proficiently with her hair in buns and party with pearls and soft skirts. Now there was this.

When John sobered up, he figured he owed an apology or two but he'd never been in the habit of issuing the apologies. They got moving to the next hunt. Claire kept herself busy. Researching, organizing costume bags, labeling kits for easy access. Not that men cared about that stuff until they needed it. She rode with him in the truck, often with her head on his shoulder or his thigh, sleeping through the drive. She shared his bed at night. They only had sex when Dean was out for the night or if Dean was off on a hunt of his own.

After New Year's, Claire started to get restless. If she wasn't raring for a hunt, she was trying to find someplace to bang his brains out. She was quiet. John started to really worry after Dean's birthday. She had gotten Dean a little cake, sang happy birthday. Dean had blushed and disappeared to drink the night away.

"You okay?" He asked her when she sat on the end of the bed.

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I don't know what I'm doing, John."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know." Her voice was thick with tears. "I was Dean's age when I had Sebastien. He was my world, John. My whole world. He's gone and there's things in the night that I can't… I was born rich. I had everything I wanted. I joined the Air Force to be spiteful but I learned I could do without. Doing this… is so much… different than what I was doing before. I can't just be a teacher now. Not with all those kids… knowing mine is gone. Knowing that any one of them is a target for something we've been killing."

"Claire."

"I wish I was Darlene. Really. Some girl without a past who kills things and has a boyfriend who won't commit. I'd rather be her than be Claire. The mourning mother with no direction."

"You can leave whenever you want. I won't hold you here." John promised. "I'll worry, though."

"Like I'm another one of your kids." She laughed. Then she started crying. "I'm so… my clock is ticking. I want to have a kid but I can't. Not… in this world. Not where there's so much evil."

"Claire, look at me." He reached over and lifted her chin. "You can do whatever you want. If you want kids, go have 'em. You know enough. You can protect them."

"_Go_ have kids." She sniffed and nodded. "Go have kids with someone who isn't you."

"Look at me. I'm old. I'm almost 50 and I've raised kids in this life. Sammy was six months old when Mary died. Dean was four. We sat still about… three months and then I said goodbye to that life. We moved and moved and I did what I could but you ask either one of my boys. They resent me for it. Sam's run off and Dean's been trying to leave but can't figure out how. I'm gonna keep moving and keep searching for the thing that killed my Mary. I'm glad I could help you get those pixies but that isn't the reason I started doing this."

"Why don't I get to have a love of my life?" She jerked her chin out of his hand. "Why? I've never felt like this about anyone in my life. You like me _fine_. You don't _mind_ when I jump your bones but you…" She stood up. "I just… it's not like you want to be alone. It's not like you'd rather hook up with random ladies the way Dean does. You're _okay_ with this but as it is and it's not allowed to _be_ _more_."

He didn't know what to say to her. It was more or less true. "I don't got it in me, Claire. I don't. It burned 20 years ago."

She just nodded. He lowered his eyes. "You're a liar, John Winchester. You won't let me go. I've _tried_ to leave and you keep pulling me back and it's not because you're _worried_ about me." She spat out. "Maybe I started this but you keep it rolling just as much as I do. Maybe you _don't_ love me. Maybe you don't _want_ to love me but there's something inside you that won't let me go." She straddled his lap and made him look her in the eye. "Either you do love me and that's why you don't want me to go… Or you don't care that it hurts me and you just want some ass that you don't have to shop for."

He didn't answer her. He turned his face away and she tore at his belt. "Stop it."

"No. I won't. Obviously, this is all you keep me around for." She pulled the belt apart then the fly of his pants. "You just stop me any time."

"I just told you to stop it." He grabbed her hands. "Why? Why is it so important to know?"

"I'm not a piece of furniture. I'm not a bag you carry around. I'm not one of your boys. Love me or let me go." She pressed her lips together and leaned on him but his grip on her hands was like a vice. "Just… that's it. It's _that simple_. Love me or let me go."

Dean returned in the morning to find his dad and Claire naked but covered enough. He quickly showered and got his bag packed. He tossed it in the car and ran down the street to get breakfast. When he got back, his father was showered and Claire was in the shower. He handed his dad one of the coffees and a box. John took it and inhaled the fumes first thing. Dean glanced at the bathroom. "You guys okay?"

"I guess." John shrugged. "How was your night?"

"You know me…" Dean grinned but it faded. "She's… she's like head over heels for you, you know."

"I know." He lifted his eyes to his son. "I know."

"Well? I mean… Dad… I don't exactly see you… shacking up long term. I'm honestly surprised you did it this long…"

"I know it." John stood and set his breakfast on the table. He took a long drink of his coffee. "Just drop it, today, huh? It was a long night."

"What I said… when we left Caleb's… I didn't remember."

"I know." John sat and got to eating. "I'm not in the mood for caring and sharing today, Dean. Really."

"Yeah, I got it."

Claire emerged and smiled at Dean. "You got breakfast. Thanks!" She picked up her cup of coffee and took a big gulp. She took her box to the floor by the TV. "You have fun last night?"

"Yeah. I did." He gave her a grin. "What did you do for your 25th birthday?"

"Um… I think I was puking my guts out. I hadn't drunk anything since Sebastien was born. I made myself sick." She laughed and dug into her eggs and bacon. Her laughter faded but the smile stayed.

"How about you, Dad?"

"I was married. I got steak. Cake. Nookie. Good night." John summarized and didn't glance back at where Claire was picking at her eggs sullenly.

"Right." Dean stabbed at his eggs.

"What's the next hunt, guys?" Claire cut in.

"Poltergeists in Louisiana." Dean announced. "Three of 'em. Nasty. I got a friend down in New Orleans… working some mojo for us. We go, pick up the stuff, then we get to work." John started laughing. "What?"

"The last time you picked the hunt…" He took a breath. "Don't let me lose you again, kid. You walk out, make sure I know it."

"Yeah, Dad. Course." Dean nodded.

John left the truck in a storage unit. They piled into the Impala to head to Louisiana. He slept in the backseat most of the way. He felt them pull into a gas station but it wasn't near close enough to their destination. He heard them chattering about gas, snacks and bathroom. He felt the trunk open and shut. Probably just Dean looking for a knife or his wallet. A few minutes later, he felt Dean get into the car. Then after about ten minutes, he got out again. When it took longer than five minutes for him to get back, John sat up and opened his eyes. When he slid out of the car, Dean was heading back with a panicked expression on his face. "Dean? What's the hold up?"

"I can't find Claire. She said she was going to the bathroom but I've filled up the tank and took a piss myself. She didn't come back." Dean breathed heavily.

John took a breath and looked around. "You say you filled up then went to take a piss?"

"Yeah. Then I got cup of coffee inside." Dean nodded.

John grabbed the keys and opened the trunk. Her bag was gone. He set his jaw. "Let it be, Dean. Let her go."

"What?" Dean walked around the back and saw the missing spot where her bag had been. John shut the trunk. "She just took off. Just like that."

"Not… just like that." He sighed. "We haven't been good since… before we found you. This was coming."

"Dad…"

"It's okay. I'm okay. I just hope she's going to take care of herself." John took the keys and walked around to the driver's side. "She'll be okay."

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

John and Dean cleared the Louisiana estate of the poltergeists. They drove back through Nebraska and picked up the truck. They both pulled up to Pastor Jim's. Jim hugged Dean and shook his head at John. "It's good to see the both of you."

"Pixies, Pastor Jim. Friggin' pixies." Dean had clapped the priest on the shoulders and moved along inside to find something to eat.

John followed them inside. Jim turned when the door shut. "Where's um… Darlene?"

"Her name is Claire." Dean supplied around a mouthful of apple.

"She remembered." John cleared his throat. "She got her voice back."

"Good. Good. So… she's gone back to her old life, then." Jim asked but didn't like the way Dean's eyes shifted around.

"I hope so." John moved for the whiskey.

Dean got caught up with Jim after John had drunk himself into a stupor. Jim asked Dean plainly. "Where is Darlene? Or… Claire."

"She took off. They'd been fighting, I guess. Dad said it'd been going on since before they found me. I don't know. I mean… she was in love with him." He frowned. "It was really weird and he… I've seen my dad in love. I remember what he was like… this wasn't it. And she knew. He knew. They dragged it out. Guess she couldn't take it anymore. Just... grabbed her bag and left without saying goodbye."

"I think it was the… damsel in distress syndrome." Jim offered. "She seemed like a nice girl."

"Yeah. She was awesome. She remembered a bunch of stuff after we got those Pixies. Dad said she was slow to pick up some stuff but it was like she was a natural… cause she was in the Air Force and had some training at least. She was in Bosnia during all that mess when I was in high school. Girl saw some action." Dean chewed on his lip. "She had a kid. Died before she got taken. She was on her way out of town when it got her. Then Dad finds her and she doesn't know who she is."

"And you?"

"I ended up in Ohio. I was deaf mechanic for a minute. It was okay. I had all this hunting stuff in the car so… I was kind of with it. Muscle memory and all that. The clues they had… plugged the holes in my theories. We hunted them clean out. Hopefully, anyway."

"You're okay?"

"Yeah. I got my brain back. I got my car. I got Dad. I'm good." He smiled.

"Your dad thought you had run away. He couldn't think if any other reason unless you were dead."

"I know. I know." Dean nodded. "We made a deal. If I want out, we have words first so he knows I'm gone." He glanced to where his father had passed out. "You heard from Sammy?"

"Yeah. Your brother's doing good." Jim smiled. "He's tired. He never knew studying could be a sport, he said. He's working. He's safe. He's happy."

"Good. Good." Dean took a breath. "At least somebody is."

John woke with a hangover. He crunched aspirin and gulped water and then he used Jim's phone to make inquiries on a blonde woman with green eyes. He called from Louisiana to Kansas.

"No, I only see her when you bring her here. Did you lose her, too?" Bobby snickered.

"No… and we got Dean back."

"Yeah. Caleb told me. Thanks for the newsletter." Then he hung up.

John stared at the phone then dialed again. "Hey, it's John."

"How's it hanging, man? You still got that blonde hottie on your six?" Caleb laughed into the phone.

"I was wondering if you'd seen her, actually."

"She get lost?"

"No… I guess not."

"Dude, she took off? That sucks. But you know… if I find her… I'll wait a day before I nail her."

"Shut the fuck up, Caleb." John hung up the phone.

The fax machine jammed twice but he got her photo out and a contact number to a new cell he set up. He looked up when Dean walked in. "What you need, kid?"

"Wondering what the hell you're doing in here."

"Trying to send a fax." He shrugged and got his confirmation. He held it up.

"Fax? Really?" He had the sheet in his hand before John could stop him. "Oh, _now_ you're gonna look for her."

"Dean…"

"Just leave her alone, Dad." Dean looked away. "I was really sick of her looking at you and you weren't looking back. Just… leave her be."

John found his FBI ID and a white buttoned shirt. It had pit stains so he'd have to wear a jacket. Dean was buttoned up as well. They had to get ahead of this witch coven and fast. The bitches were sneaky and using the local hospital to collect their baby corpses for their hex bags. John suspected that they may have enchanted a few of those babies to die so that they could steal the bodies. It made him sick and Dean was pissed.

"Why do they have to use babies?" Dean grumbled. "And spit on everything and…"

"It's the period blood that gets me." John shuddered and then gagged. "That last hex bag was disgusting. In Massachusetts?"

"Oh. Ew." Dean put on a tie. "I hate that. It's disgusting. It's _unsanitary_."

"Preaching to the choir here." John put his hair to rights and grabbed the keys. "Let's go."

The hospital was on lock down. John and Dean flashed their badges and got in to speak with hospital administration. They had to wait. Dean of Medicine was in with someone. John paced the waiting room and pointed the horses racing across the plains over the couch. "How many times have we seen this one?"

"I think I saw one in a McDonald's a month ago. You know… the one that looked down on us for having muddy shoes." Dean snorted.

"I think that's all for now." The voice made them both turn when the door opened. Claire stepped out and nodded to them. "Agents, you're here."

"It's _our_ jurisdiction." John cleared his throat.

"I know you." Dean stepped up. "Your name is just…"

"Dr. Reid, CDC. I worked with you boys before." She smiled and turned to the dean. "It's a shame when you get to know people under these circumstances."

"Right. Agent Caycee, FBI, my partner, Agent Phillips." John gestured to Dean. "I imagine that Dr. Reid and ourselves are here about the same thing."

"We were just going to the nursery." Claire told them. "It's a shame about these poor children."

"Well, then. I guess we'll just all go together. If there are any more questions, we will cooperate." The dean nodded and slipped her jacket on. "Please, with me."

Dean caught up to the dean and started asking questions while Claire and John followed behind. "Dr. Reid?"

"Dean made me a few blanks. Caleb showed me how to laminate them myself the last time I stopped by."

"He told me he hadn't seen you." The hair on John's neck started to stand up.

"So it _is_ you flashing my face all over the south. Stop it." She looked up at him. "It's been a few months. Why look for me now?"

"I told you I'd worry."

"I'm doing okay, John." Hair slicked back, pearls around her neck. "What's doing this? I asked all kinds of questions. I got no clue."

"We think it's witches."

"Those are real. Of course. I was just looking to shoot something."

"Witches are a little… harder to deal with. When we go in there, you talk to the doc. Dean and I will look for the hex bags."

"Okay." She touched his arm and stepped into the nursery behind Dean. "So, Dr. Allison… there were four babies, correct?"

"Yes. It's so awful." Dr. Allison gestured to the empty cradles along one wall. "We pulled them out of rotation after the third baby. Then the fourth…"

"Where were they positioned in the room when the babies died?" She prodded.

"When there are few births, we put them all along the glass wall, so the parents can see them when they aren't handling them. We've upgraded all our security in the last couple of years. Barcodes on bracelets and scanners to make sure that the right baby goes with the right person at all times until discharge. We rarely have anyone who stays more than a night these days."

"No?" Dean looked up.

"Insurance and a lot of people are extremely healthy these days. The epidurals are refined. Infant death has come to an all time low due to science." Dr. Allison went on. "I mean… they say women used to give birth in fields and never had a problem. With nutrition and education… complications are so rare these days. So… at the second baby, we were on high alert and the third made it a formal issue."

"Autopsies?" John prompted as he looked the room over.

"Yes. On three of the four. The second child… religious issues prevented the autopsy." She cleared her throat. "We're appealing through the courts… um… for science sake… but then the bodies were taken…"

"Okay." Claire nodded. "Anything stand out?"

"The births were all healthy. Normal. Routine. Textbook, even." She sighed. "It happened on third shift. All four. Just before 3am or so. Normally, well… it's not a normal thing but… if it were just one child… we might have said it was SIDS. Four in six weeks is not SIDS."

"We'll need copies of those autopsies and the file on the second child." Dean motioned.

"What state are the parents in?" Claire asked.

"We have to interview them all, Dr. Reid." John cut off Dr. Allison before she could answer.

"I'd like to be tactful, John. These people are grieving for their children." Claire's eyes flashed at him. "If they're teetering on the edge, I'm not going to be the one who pushes them over."

"What's that supposed to mean? Is this about January?" Hands on his hips, he full on glared at her. "I'm supposed to take the blame for that?"

"It's not about blame, Agent Caycee." Claire bit out. "It's about a family losing a child and us doing our jobs without screwing them up any more than they already are."

"Okay! Let's not have a repeat of January, shall we?" Dean cleared his throat. "Agent Caycee, Dr. Reid. Let's go review the files over dinner. I'm sure we could use it."

Dr. Allison gave Dean a grateful smile. "Yes. Let me show you to the conference room. I'll have Jeannette bring the files to you."

"We won't be staying here for the review." Dean followed her out of the room. "I'll sign for the files and we'll get out of your hair."

Dr. Allison led him down a hallway. She glanced back at the nursery and whispered. "What happened in January?"

"I… it was bad. My partner isn't known for his bedside manner, so to speak, but he's the best."

"Like Dr. House?"

"Who?"

"It's a show on television." She smiled and filled him in while Jeannette made copies of the requested records. "It's very good. One very mean doctor who is the best there is. Unhireable anywhere. I certainly wouldn't hire him." She glanced back down the hallway. "Did they have a… thing? I sensed… something."

Dean laughed and looked to his shoes. "I shouldn't say." He cleared his throat. "Could I get a list of your employees who have access to the nursery as well?"

"Sure. Sure." Dr. Allison nodded. "She's a little… young for him. No?"

He chuckled. "I told him that. I think he knew he was getting himself into some trouble."

"How long you been partners?"

"Feels like my whole life. Certainly most of my career. I lucked out." Dean told her as he watched the pile of paper grow. "Learning from the best has its advantages."

"He's a little old for a field agent."

"That… bedside manner again." Dean winked at her.

"Agent Phillips." Claire appeared. "Your partner's looking for you."

"Just getting our copies. You okay?"

"I can handle him, Dean." She squeezed his arm. "Don't you worry about me."

He had kind of missed her. "What's for dinner?"

"Salad. I don't know what you boys are eating." She wrinkled her nose. "I never realized how much I missed salad until I left him."

Dean laughed. "I like you, Claire."

Jeanette put together a box and put the pages in folders. "That should do it."

"Thanks a bunch." Dean signed for the box and picked it up. "Oooh. That's a lot of trees."

"I'll get the doors." Claire offered. "Thank you Dr. Allison. We'll get back you as soon as we find something."

"Good luck."

Claire got Dean out the doors before she started talking. "This is some fucked up shit."

"Yeah. Witches usually are."

Claire opened the hex bags when John set them in front of her at the seedy bar and grill they had chosen for dinner. "Bones."

"Black cat bones, that's a baby bone there."

"Baby what?"

"A baby. Human baby." Dean made a face.

"And this… flaky brown…" She peered at it and sat up. "Is that… placenta?"

"Oh man. Witches are nasty." Dean groaned.

John walked her through the hex bag. "Baby bones, black cat bones, not placenta… might be a menstrual clot… some flower… acacia, maybe."

"It's fuckin' gross." Claire shoved the bags back at him. "Maybe I'll take off and leave you guys to it."

"We could use you." Dean prompted immediately. "These covens are nasty shit. Women respond to women."

"It's got to be someone in the hospital. I mean. The babies died, they got autopsied and then the bodies were stolen." John made some notes in his journal. "If it's not for the bones, it's to feed something. Maybe a finicky ghoul." He paused. "What were those TODs on the kids? Before 3 am?"

"Witching hours are midnight to 3am." Dean nodded to Claire before he rifled through the box to glance at the first pages on all four babies' files. "I only glanced at them before they went into the box… the dean was chatty… Looks like… 2:58am, 2:47am, 2:54am and 2:49am."

"Huh." John looked up. "All within the last fifteen minutes. Why not any sooner?"

"Maybe it was a break?" Claire sat back when their food arrived. Her salad looked disgusting. She slid it back. "You know what? I'll have the special after all."

John laughed as he bit into his burger. She stole his fries. "You mean like a smoke break or something?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "Though… prep time… how long would that take?"

"No clue." Dean shook his head and shoved a fry in his mouth.

"She's right. They would have to chant to activate the hex bags." John breathed out through his nose. "Maybe a lunch break. They'd have to have somewhere set up so they could just jump right into it."

"So we got to do the full tour tomorrow." Dean groaned and handed Claire her burger when it arrived. "Check it for special sauce first. It looks like that kind of joint."

"I'll leave a big tip." She mumbled around her mouthful.

"Third shift, Witching hour deaths. Stolen babies." John rubbed his head.

"I'm gonna get us some beers." Dean shot to his feet.

John looked at her. "You been hunting all this time?"

"Yeah." She nodded.

"Well, you're still alive."

"I guess."

"You fuck Caleb?"

"Jealous?" She scoffed at him but shook her head. "He's a pig. He's a sad, lonely man. He tried… _something_ that I think was supposed to be charm."

John laughed. "Good. You never know where he's been."

"He's such a toad. Why are you friends with him?" She laughed.

"He's good at what he does."

"Yeah, I guess." She took the beer from Dean when he got back. She tipped it back and drank down half.

"Bartender's got nothing." Dean shook his head at his dad.

"Alright. Let's finish up and get those files back to the motel." John pulled on his beer and took a huge bite of his burger.

"You're gonna give yourself heartburn and I'll bet you're low on antacid." Claire warned him.

"Don't you go worrying about my esophagus. I'll be fine." John waved her off.

"You been taking care of him?" Claire looked to Dean.

Dean stared between them. "No. I'm not having this conversation. Everyone is tiptoeing around it but I'm not going to do it. This isn't the Parent Trap."

John lowered his eyes to his plate. Claire was staring straight ahead. "Let's not get into this before the hunt, yeah?"

"He's right." Claire nodded. "Let's get finished up with this thing."

John sent Dean out to look over Claire's car. Claire shrugged out of her suit jacket. "Is he pissed at me or you?"

"Me. It comes with the territory. After about age 11, it becomes all about how much you suck as a parent." John looked her over. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"You freaked him out when you left. I understood… but I was asleep. Dean was running around looking for you."

"Oh shit…" She sighed and sat across from him where he was poring through the files. "Sorry."

"How many hunts?"

"10? Mostly hauntings. I don't… go after beasties by myself."

"You look good."

"Don't start."

"I'm saying." He shrugged. "It's… good to see you."

"So, you were worried?"

"Yeah."

"I guess that's something." She set the little coffee maker to drip the strong stuff.

"We gonna start this again?"

"No. Most definitely not."

"Tomorrow, I'll interview the hospital staff. You come along and do some reviews, chat up some of the nurses, complain about me."

"Yeah?" She laughed.

"Witches have a hard on for man-bashing. Most of their spells have something to do with being women scorned."

"Scorned? You think I'm scorned?"

"Darlene…"

"Claire. I'm Claire."

The door swung open. "Your car. It's a piece of shit." Dean shrugged out of his jacket and reached for the booze. "I can fix the carburetor and the sticky transmission… but it better hold together until we're done with this case. Where are we? By the way? Witches really skeeve me out."

"Claire and I are going back to the hospital tomorrow. I need you to go through the papers. You know what to look for, right?"

"Yeah. I got it." He groaned. "Where's Sammy when you need a grunt to go through a thousand papers?" He stiffened and looked contrite for a moment. "Sorry."

John only nodded. "I got Bobby looking into what they were doing with the baby bodies."

"Who cares?"

"We have to make sure we're going to stop it. Does us almost no good to take them out if they've completed their mission." John reminded. Dean nodded and flopped onto a bed. He looked to Claire. "You got a room?"

"Not yet."

"Stay here. If they suspect something, they'll be on us before we know it."

Claire looked from him to Dean. Dean shrugged. "He's got a point. Witches are nasty, nasty bitches."

The hunt went like hunts did. John got a lead, got himself exposed, hexed, saved and they got the witches before they could kill any more babies to stockpile their hex bag supply and skin care regime. Claire stared at the dead bodies as the men dug the pit. They were just women. John said they weren't women anymore but then what were they? She helped heft them into the pit. John soaked them in salt and gasoline and set the pit on fire. They drove all night to another town where they could get lost. Claire shared John's bed. She woke with her nose in his back. When she sat up, Dean's bed was empty and she could hear the clink and ratchet of tools.

"You still hug too tight in your sleep." He mumbled without opening his eyes.

"You're still a gas factory when you hit REM cycle." She countered. He rolled over and she leaned across his chest. "This is not confusing at all."

"Who's confused?"

"I'm sharing a bed with my ex-boyfriend just… six months after I ditched his ass for greener pastures. His adult son is working on my car and I kind of feel like we should be having really hot ex-sex about now."

"Not confusing at all." He touched her face.

"You just can't say it, can you? You feel it. You show it. You just can't say it." She kissed his lips softly. "You can't be married to a ghost the rest of your life."

"I can try."

"So… you're still married to her. She died 20 years ago. You sleep around, John. Dean and I had this conversation. You slept with me for a year. That's not keeping your vows. That's you protecting yourself from feeling that way again. Believe me I can understand a bit. I haven't been in love with any man before you. Nothing came close… but I lost my son. I'd love to have another child but I'm scared that child will be taken from me, too. I want very much to be a mother and keep that child safe… this world is awful. You know what? I do have hope. Dean… he's got his issues but he's a good man. That means you can raise a child in this life who isn't completely fucked up."

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

"I haven't told anyone this. _Anyone_." John cleared his throat. "I have another kid."

"Sam?"

"His name is Adam." John didn't meet her eyes. "I was… almost 40… I had a bad hunt. I… charmed a nurse at the ER, she let me take her home. Right after Sam left home, I got a call from the nurse. She… wasn't going to tell me. He's an okay kid. I talk to him sometimes. See him when I can get an excuse to get away. Course, I haven't seen him since his birthday couple of years ago."

"Why haven't you told anyone?"

"He's _normal_. His mom is alive. They have a good life. I've ruined my kids. They're good men but I know my boys. I got issues and they got issues and… Sam's trying to be normal. He's not. Dean… is not normal."

"Explain it to me."

"He takes pride in his work. He loves to move. He can't sit still. That's no life."

"Plenty of people do it who don't hunt, you know. He's okay. He's a horndog but that's normal too. Reminds me of half the guys I've dated in my life. He's a good guy and I'd be proud to call him a friend or family."

"Then marry him."

"Yeah. Dean married." She laughed and ran a finger through his chest hair. "Dean's not the type."

"No?"

"He does like… _different_." She laughed. "Wipe that look off your face. I'm not proposing. Lord knows I got the message loud and clear. I'm not happy about it but I'm not holding my breath."

"So… what are you doing?"

"I haven't gotten laid since February."

"I find that hard to believe."

"I'm not a slut. I have standards."

"You need to review your SOP, Airman. That last fellow was old and rickety."

"You're not old and rickety, not yet anyway." She kissed him again. "Why you do have to be so damned sexy, hmm? It's like false advertising. Great smile, intense eyes…" She licked her lips. "Look girls, don't touch. Held together with spit and chewing gum."

"You talk a lot."

"You don't remember all my post it notes?"

"I guess…" He stroked her hair out of her face. "You're beautiful, Claire. Gorgeous. You could get any guy you wanted."

"Except you." She sat up and scooted off the bed. She took her bag to the bathroom.

John lay there with his hard on until Dean poked his head in. "Hey Dad, her car is a piece of shit. It'll take… like a week to fix and I'd rather do it someplace I can scavenge the parts."

"You want to take her to Bobby's?"

"Yeah… wait. What? Me take her to Bobby's?" Dean crossed his arms. "I'm kind of done being the kid with the parents splitting up. It's gross cause… she's only a few years older than me."

"I'm trying to leave her alone." John stared at the ceiling. "Do it better when I'm not around her."

"Fine." Dean walked in and glanced around. "What are you going to do?"

"I can find a job if I need to keep busy."

"You going camping? This conversation was already awkward…" Dean turned to the wall.

"Sorry." John sat up and listened for the running water. "She's okay. I'll leave her be."

John smiled at the kid. It was easy to smile at the kid. He opened the cooler and handed him a beer. "Quite a day."

"Yeah." Adam nodded and stared at the beer in his hand.

"Go on, open it. I won't tell your mom."

Adam laughed. "Can I have the whole thing?"

"Yeah but it's the only one you're getting so… _savor_ it." He twisted the top off his own beer.

"What happened to the Impala?" Adam twisted the cap off his beer and took a sip.

"I had to… pass it on. It was time."

"Mom's cooking. Spaghetti and meatballs." Adam squinted at John.

"Was that an invitation?"

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind." Adam pressed.

"We'll see." John nodded. They cast out their lines and caught little fish. Adam set them all free. John wanted to laugh but the kid was one of the good ones. Adam finished his beer and used the bottle to make a sundial. He made a mark to note when they should head back. Smart kid, too.

"Do you think Mom is pretty?" He asked on the walk back.

"We made you, I'd say I do." John laughed and ruffled his hair. Then he ran the question back through his head. "Are you asking me to take your mom out?"

"It's just… you get along. I just don't see why you can't stick around. Hank Meyer's dad has an opening at his body shop…" Adam trailed off when John stopped walking near the truck. "It'd be nice to have a real family."

"You have a real family. Your mom is great. She takes great care of you." John set the cooler in the backseat. "I'm… no good to anyone these days."

The ride to town was stony. John pulled over a few blocks away. Adam was pissed. "Look, Adam. You're a great kid. You got a good head on your shoulders and someday you'll realize that not every couple is… gonna make the long run. Things happen. You can't change them after. You move on, you make the best of it. I'm trying, Adam, to give you something of me but… I suck."

"You can be a mechanic anywhere. I just… don't understand why it's gotta be a phone call every blue moon… a baseball game once a year or a fishing trip just for the day." Adam shook his head. "I like spending time with you but you missed a lot. I wish she had told you."

"Don't go getting pissed at your mom. You only get one. It's a fair assumption that she knew what kind of person I was. That's why she didn't tell me. It's not like I called her after our… date." John took a deep breath. "I'm sorry you didn't get a mom and dad the way everyone else did. It's just the way it worked out. Your mom did her best. I'm not good for much."

"Why do you say that?"

"Cause I'm almost 50, Adam. I don't have a lot to show for my life. I was married once. She died. I've been all over the place since. Then I find out about you. I came right away. I… I could only make things worse if I hung around more. The best thing I can do… is keep my distance and watch you grow into the man your mom is making of you. You're gonna go to college, get married and have lots of kids and you're going to be a good father because you'll know what it was like not to have one."

"You're saying it's not us, it's you."

"Pretty much."

"How do you know?"

"I met a woman. She was beautiful. Stopping traffic _beautiful_ and she was in love with me for… I don't know why. She wasn't perfect because no one is but… she and I… it was okay. It was okay for a long time. Then it wasn't okay anymore. Just wasn't. She left me because she wants things that I can't give her."

"Like what?"

"That's a… an adult question."

"I hate it when you say that."

"Well, some discussions are better not had between father and son." As the words came out of his mouth, he realized that he'd never done Dean that courtesy. He'd even committed the sin of oversharing at far too young an age. "My consolation is that you'll be a better man than I am, Adam."

Dean met up with John in California. They watched Sam for a bit. Dean looked to his father. "You never told him what happened to me, did you?"

"No." John shook his head. "I… didn't want to give him anymore excuses to hate me."

"He doesn't, Dad."

"I think he thinks differently." John watched Sam wave to his friends and continue his run. "At least he's keeping in shape."

"Yeah." Dean looked to the steering wheel. "You gonna talk to him?"

"No. He's okay. He's safe enough."

"Claire and I talked after you took off." Dean cleared his throat. "I gave her some of the books. She's gonna keep hunting but said if she gets anything she can't handle, she'll call us in for it."

"Okay." John nodded.

"_Three words_, Dad. You couldn't say 'em?"

"I couldn't."

"Words are words."

"Who are you? What do we do, huh? Words aren't just _words_, Dean." John had to bring his voice down. "You don't say what you don't mean. Sammy taught me that."

"When else are you going to get a girl like that? She's bad ass and super hot and…"

"And I don't got it in me, Dean. I just don't."

"You're a liar. I've seen you watch her."

"And maybe I don't want what happened to your mom to happen to someone else."

"Is that why you can't love someone else? You think it was your fault?" Dean stared at his father, green eyes wide.

"I don't know Dean. I don't. I've been all over this country. I've been trying to find the whys and wherefores and I'm coming up empty and… every time Claire looks at me the way she looks at me… I see her on the ceiling, screaming…" John shut his eyes but it was there on his eyelids. Claire in white on his ceiling, bleeding then burning.

Dean set his eyes on the steering wheel. "She's gonna be okay, you know."

"I know."

"She's tough. I mean. Who gets raped by a fuckin' pixie and then takes up hunting? Most people… that'll get'em locked up some place with strait jackets. And the way she handled those witches. She was good. She's damn good." Dean smiled. "She ran me over her hunts without us. She's been on a tear. She's hustling like you taught her. I showed her how to scam the credit cards. Got her car fixed up. Told her to give me a call if anything starts making noise."

"I don't want to talk about Claire anymore." John shifted in his seat.

"She's a hunter, Dad. We'll run into her, probably. Is it going to be awkward?"

"Nah."

"Okay. You want a burger?"

"We'll go when he gets back." John gestured to the dorm across the street.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Dean steered them across the state. Sam was still sleeping. Dean hadn't thought about her in years and there she was on the phone, requesting help on a hunt that was too big for her. He was honestly surprised that she was still alive. Then there she was, leaning on her car in the early morning light. She was still drop dead gorgeous. She smiled when she saw the car. Sam stirred when the car stopped. "Why are we stopping?"

"Picking up research for a hunt." Dean smacked him. "Come on."

Dean got out and stretched. She tilted her head at him. "You look awful."

"Thanks. Good to know I'm still so high on your to-do list." Dean winked at her.

"You were _never_ on my to-do list." She met him halfway in a hug. "Good to see you, Dean."

"It's great to see you!" Dean heard Sam get out of the car.

"You look so much more grown up." She squeezed one last time. "How long has it been?"

"A few years." He grinned. "That must have been '04?"

"About then." She nodded then looked to the tall fellow trailing behind him. "Oh my God, is that _Sam_?"

"Yep. That's the little geek." Dean laughed and turned to his brother. "Dude, this is Claire Reid."

"Hi." Sam tilted his head at him and shrugged.

"We never told you about Claire Reid?" Dean blinked at his brother.

"Well, you know your dad never did." Claire shook Sam's hand. "You are much taller than your picture suggested."

"You knew Dad?" Sam's face contorted the way it sometimes did when he talked about his deceased parents.

"Yeah." She smiled and shut her mouth. "Yeah. I knew John. And this guy. _Deviant_." She slugged Dean on the shoulder. "Where _is_ John? I figured he'd come with."

"Shit, no one told you?" Dean's shoulders slumped. "He's dead."

"When?" She wrapped her fingers around the pearls at her neck.

"'06."

"Shit." She breathed and her eyes filled with tears. She took a shuddering breath while she blinked her eyes clear. "I thought he was indestructible."

"I did, too." Dean shook his head. "No one really told you?"

"Who? Dean, I only know a handful of hunters and really… after Caleb… I fell off the world." She glanced back at her car.

"It was a few days… _after_ Caleb." Dean told her. "You and Caleb, then?"

"He wasn't _really_ a dick… but you know. That's my type." She snorted. "One time I stopped by, he was too drunk to be a pig. Go figure." She handed over the research. "I'm sorry to hear about John."

"Yeah… yeah… I'm sorry no one told you. I should have called." He blew out a breath, his eyes on the folder. Didn't make it easier to live the moment.

"Pardon me, but _why_?" Sam cut in. Mad and defensive. "You knew our dad but why are _you_ on the short list?"

"John and I were _close_. He got me started." She swallowed down a lump. "Saved my life. Taught me about the dark things. Then I cut out and struck out on my own. Been doing it ever since."

"Saved you?"

Dean looked to the ground. "Dad saved her from… Pixies."

"Pixies?" Sam barked out a laugh. "Tinkerbells."

"_Not_. Tinkerbells." Claire bit out. "So _much_ not Tinkerbells." She met Dean's eye. "So, he doesn't know the story, huh?"

"I'll tell him someday." Dean shrugged. "You been okay?"

"Caleb… that was hard. Jim… I don't call Bobby much. I uh… was always a little uncomfortable there. Not cause of Bobby… it was just… _too soon_ after the Pixie." Claire shrugged. "He was a good guy."

"Is."

"Thank God." She breathed. "So many we lost… all at the same time, huh?"

"It was the thing that… killed our Mom." Dean filled in. "But I got it. I got it."

"_After_ John, then."

"Yeah."

"And he never talked about me again, huh." She nodded to herself.

"You know how he was about you. I talked him to death about it and he would never say it out right… but _once_… We were spying on Sam." Dean gestured to his brother. "We were spying on him and I got him to say something about you before he mandated we didn't talk about you anymore."

Sam frowned as he tried to catch up on their shorthand. She tilted her head and the wet seeped out of her eyes. "Yeah? What did he say?"

"That every time you looked at him… the way you looked at him, he saw you on the ceiling… burning and screaming." Dean pursed his lips together. "I don't know if you know what that means."

"That's how she died." Claire breathed. "I always knew but he would… _never_ say it." She sniffed. When she wiped her nose, her hands moved with her next words. "He was a good man. An asshole but a good man."

"You signed." Dean barked out a laugh.

"Happens sometimes still." She smiled. "Your Dad hated it. Said he had no fuckin' use for it."

"You… _dated_ our dad?" Sam grinned suddenly.

"For a little while. He was a hard man to love."

The car door slamming shut got their attention. A little girl approached and hid behind Claire. Dean pointed. "She yours?" Claire nodded. "She's big. How old?"

"This is Erica. She is five." Claire motioned her around to the boys. "Erica, this is Sam and Dean Winchester. Old friends of Mommy's."

"Hi."

"Five?" Dean frowned and counted on his fingers. "Uh… Claire?"

"She's not John's." Claire shook her head. "Your dad made himself perfectly clear on _that_ subject. She's Caleb's." She sniffed. "He got to see her. We were in Kansas City paying respects to my folks and Sebastien when they killed him."

"Sorry. Caleb was my man." Dean tilted his head at the little girl. "At least she looks like you. I'm sorry but Caleb… as a girl?"

"She's got his eyes." Claire reached down and hefted Erica into her arms so they could see her pretty blue eyes. "My temperament and I kind of wish that came from him."

"She's pretty. Just like her mom." Dean leaned over and kissed Claire on the cheek. "We got this. You take her home."

"No… we don't have one." Claire shook her head. "I got used to running around. I think I only sat still through my pregnancy. John's bad habits rubbing off… but I told him… he didn't do such a bad job with his kids. Winchesters are good people." She set the girl down. "Back the car, baby. We'll go in a minute." Erica ran back to the car. Claire looked at Dean for a long moment. "You ever check to see if they were still there?"

"I check all the time. No one else went missing the way we did." Dean gestured over his shoulder. "Sometimes, I still check for that thing on my back."

"I made John take a picture so I could see for myself." She shuddered. "I still don't do woods."

"Yeah, I hate the friggin' woods." Dean nodded. "And fucking pixies."

"Fucking Pixies." She agreed. "I gotta get the kid some pancakes. So… um… thanks for taking the case off my hands. I don't do those…"

"No problem." Dean glanced at the first article. "Did you catch it?"

"Yeah…" She backed away. "I did. I found one, led me to it and I made peace. A man kills your kid in a hit and run and you wanna kill him and then you find out it was a demon in the driver's seat the whole time… If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been in the woods that day. So then you think… was it fate? Was it supposed to happen this way? I don't do demons anymore. Give me a salt and burn any day. Demons, witches and pixies. I just…."

"I hear you."

"You boys take care. Maybe we'll see each other again."

"Be safe, Claire." Dean watched her go and motioned Sam back to the car. Once back in the Impala, they watched Claire drive off. "I forgot how fucking beautiful she was."

"She was into Dad?" Sam scoffed.

"Yeah… like crazy, hardcore and he didn't really fight her on it." Dean nodded. "It was bizarre because he insisted he didn't feel for her but… for someone with no… investment in the relationship, he didn't let her go."

"How'd they get hooked up?"

"Fuckin' Pixies man." Dean laughed. "I mean… Dad and I were hunting them. They got me. I wound up in Ohio with no clothes, no memory and fuckin' deaf… Claire… Dad saved her and she had no memory, no clothes and she could make noise but no words. He spent a year taking care of her and looking for me. When they found me, they were in the middle of some hot and heavy fight. And that's when she meets Caleb. And Dad… fought her every step. Took everything she had to give and gave it back and all she wanted was to hear three words. He couldn't do it. So she took off. We hooked up a couple of more times before Dad took off on me. She was just… burning that torch. Everyone could see it. I'm really, really surprised that kid is Caleb's."

"Whoa… you were _deaf_ for a year?"

"_Sucked_, dude."

"And she was _fucking Dad_?"

"Caleb's word was _tragic_." Dean looked at the file. "This… is what she does now. Salt and burns and if the risk is too high, she passes them on. When you and I hooked up again, I stopped hearing from her… I guess she was busy with Caleb."

"Caleb was a dick." Sam shook his head.

"He was a good guy… he just… He was a hunter. Like the rest of us. Sounds like they tried to make a go of it."

"Why didn't Dad call me?"

"He said… he didn't want to give you any more excuses to hate him." Dean took a breath. "You know… as much as I've learned about Dad since he died… the thing that I cling to is the way he was after Claire left. We were always swinging by to check on you and he was sneaking in APBs on her. He was… lost and drifting, man."

"What's this hunt, huh?" Sam cleared his throat.

"OH, it's gonna be good. Claire finds me the good shit."

THE END


End file.
